The impact of interoceptive accuracy and stimulation type on the out-of-body experience.

Synchronous stroking or movement of a virtual body seen in front of a person can create an out-of-body experience, making the virtual body feel like their own. The effect of synchrony on explicit feelings of embodiment was stronger when the virtual body moved in sync with the person's own movements (visuomotor) than when it was stroked in sync (visuotactile). How far people drifted when walking after the experience depended on their interoceptive accuracy (IA), measured by a heartbeat counting task. For visuotactile conditions, the synchrony effect was larger in people with low IA, suggesting they relied more on visual information. For visuomotor conditions, the synchrony effect was larger in people with high IA, suggesting they relied more on feedback from their own movements.

Study at a glance

Abstract

People tend to perceive a virtual body standing in front of them as their own if it is either stroked or moving synchronously with their own real body-the out-of-body experience (OBE). We combined synchrony manipulation with two other factors of theoretical interest: the kind of stimulation, visuotactile stimuli or visuomotor correlations, being synchronised and the interoceptive accuracy (IA) of participants, assessed by means of the heartbeat counting task. Results showed that explicit measures of embodiment were systematically affected by synchrony, and this synchrony effect was more pronounced for visuomotor than for visuotactile conditions. The walking drift was affected by IA: In visuotactile conditions, the synchrony effect was pronounced in individuals with low IA, presumably reflecting a stronger impact of the visual information. In visuomotor conditions, however, the synchrony effect was stronger in individuals with high IA, presumably reflecting a stronger impact of re-afferent information generated by the participants' own movements.