The Bodily Self from Psychosis to Psychedelics
Amir Harduf, Roy Salomon preprint
The sense of self, normally experienced as unified and embodied, can be altered in psychosis and by psychedelic compounds. Using the Moving Rubber Hand Illusion with 75 participants—psychosis patients, people with substantial psychedelic experience, and controls—the study found that psychosis patients had reduced Body Ownership and Sense of Agency during volitional action. The psychedelic group reported subjective long-lasting changes to the sense of self, but no differences between control and psychedelic participants were found. The results suggest that psychedelics induce acute and enduring subjective changes in the sense of self that are not manifested at the level of the bodily self, while bodily self-processing related to volitional action is disrupted in psychosis.