Body ownership and kinaesthetic illusions: Dissociated bodily experiences for distinct levels of body consciousness?
Consciousness and Cognition January 1, 2024 Louise Dupraz, J. Bourgin, L. Pia et al.
Seeing an embodied humanoid avatar move its arms can make an observer feel as though their own static arms are moving, treating the avatar's kinematic signals like those from a biological body. Two experiments showed that the sense of body ownership over an avatar seen from a first-person perspective was closely linked to visuomotor synchrony. However, kinaesthetic illusions did not depend on this synchrony, indicating that the avatar is inevitably processed at the sensorimotor level as one's own body, whether consciously considered as such or not. The findings suggest that body ownership and kinaesthetic illusions may be underpinned by distinct representations: the body image and the body schema.