Evidence of a hierarchical representation in bodily self-consciousness: the neural correlates of embodiment and presence in virtual worlds.
Frontiers in human neuroscience January 1, 2025 Evan Alexander Owens, Robert O Duncan 2 citations
Bodily self-consciousness (BSC) comprises embodiment—the sense of owning a body—and presence—the sense of being at a location. Evidence suggests these rely on partly distinct neural networks, but how they interact remains unclear. A model is proposed in which presence depends on embodiment. In a virtual-reality experiment, correlated versus uncorrelated sensory feedback manipulated embodiment, and first- versus third-person perspective manipulated presence. Behavioral performance (reaction times and accuracy) improved with correlated feedback and first-person perspective. Functional MRI revealed frontoparietal areas supporting embodiment and temporoparietal areas supporting presence. Manipulations of embodiment produced larger effect sizes in presence-related areas than vice versa, and this pattern held for overlapping areas. The data indicate that presence-related brain areas may depend on activity in embodiment-related networks.