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Body ownership and attention in the mirror: Insights from somatoparaphrenia and the rubber hand illusion

Jenkinson, PM; Haggard, P; Ferreira, NC; Fotopoulou, A; (2013) Body ownership and attention in the mirror: Insights from somatoparaphrenia and the rubber hand illusion. Neuropsychologia , 51 (8) pp. 1453-1462. 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.03.029. Green open access

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Abstract

The brain receives and synthesises information about the body from different modalities, coordinates and perspectives, and affords us with a coherent and stable sense of body ownership. We studied this sense in a somatoparaphrenic patient and three control patients, all with unilateral right-hemisphere lesions. We experimentally manipulated the visual perspective (direct- versus mirror-view) and spatial attention (drawn to peripersonal space versus extrapersonal space) in an experiment involving recognising one's own hand. The somatoparaphrenic patient denied limb ownership in all direct view trials, but viewing the hand via a mirror significantly increased ownership. The extent of this increase depended on spatial attention; when attention was drawn to the extrapersonal space (near-the-mirror) the patient showed a near perfect recognition of her arm in the mirror, while when attention was drawn to peripersonal space (near-the-body) the patient recognised her arm in only half the mirror trials. In a supplementary experiment, we used the Rubber Hand Illusion to manipulate the same factors in healthy controls. Ownership of the rubber hand occurred in both direct and mirror view, but shifting attention between peripersonal and extrapersonal space had no effect on rubber-hand ownership. We conclude that the isolation of visual perspectives on the body and the division of attention between two different locations is not sufficient to affect body ownership in healthy individuals and right hemisphere controls. However, in somatoparaphrenia, where first-person body ownership and stimulus-driven attention are impaired by lesions to a right-hemisphere ventral attentional-network, the body can nevertheless be recognised as one's own if perceived in a third-person visual perspective and particularly if top-down, spatial attention is directed away from peripersonal space.

Type: Article
Title: Body ownership and attention in the mirror: Insights from somatoparaphrenia and the rubber hand illusion
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.03.029
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.03...
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Science & Technology, Social Sciences, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Behavioral Sciences, Neurosciences, Psychology, Experimental, Neurosciences & Neurology, Psychology, Somatoparaphrenia, Perspective, Rubber hand illusion, Body ownership, Attention, VISUOSPATIAL NEGLECT, VISUAL PERSPECTIVE, NEURAL MECHANISMS, LIMB OWNERSHIP, BODILY SELF, FAR SPACE, ANOSOGNOSIA, AWARENESS, BRAIN, HEMIPLEGIA
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10120669
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