Neuropsychologia
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Body ownership for an artificial hand and the perceived position of one's own hand can be manipulated in the so-called rubber hand illusion. To induce this illusion, typically an artificial hand is placed next to the participant's body and stroked in synchrony with the real hand, which is hidden from view. Our first aim was to test if the crossmodal congruency task could be used to obtain a measure for the strength of body ownership in the rubber hand illusion. ⋯ Secondly, we tested the hypothesis that the lateral spatial distance between the real hand and artificial hand limits the rubber hand illusion. We found no lateral spatial limits for the rubber hand illusion created by synchronous stroking within reaching distances. In conclusion, the sense of ownership seems to be related to modulations of multisensory interactions possibly through peripersonal space mechanisms, and these modulations do not appear to be limited by an increase in distance between artificial hand and real hand.
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The present investigation concerns the multidimensionality of self-consciousness. I will specifically address this general issue by focusing on bodily self-consciousness and by considering how one is conscious of one's body through consciousness of both its physicality and its subjectivity. Here, physicality is defined as the belongingness to the physical world; subjectivity is defined as the fact of being a subject of conscious experience. ⋯ I argue that being conscious of one's body-as-subjective involves experiencing one's belongingness to the physical world; conversely, being conscious of one's body-as-physical involves experiencing it as one's own; either way, such forms of bodily self-consciousness involve experiencing both the subjectivity and the physicality of one's body. The hypothesis here is that the imbalance of these dimensions relative to each other would be pathological. I will thus underline the normal multidimensionality of bodily self-consciousness by considering its pathological breakdown as it happens in anorexia nervosa.