scholarly journals Development of the Bodily Self: Effects of Visuomotor Synchrony and Visual Appearance on Virtual Embodiment in Children and Adults

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marieke Lieve Weijs ◽  
Elle Macartney ◽  
Moritz M. Daum ◽  
Bigna Lenggenhager
Keyword(s):  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Visual Appearance ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Human Likeness ◽  
Full Body ◽  
Virtual Avatar

The sense of a bodily self is thought to depend on adaptive weighting and integration of bodily afferents and prior beliefs. Evidence from studies using paradigms such as the rubber hand illusion and full body illusion suggests changes in the integration of visuotactile bodily signals throughout childhood. Here, we extended this line of research by assessing how bottom-up visuomotor synchrony and expectancy, modulated by visual appearance of virtual avatars, contribute to embodiment in children. We compared responses to a first-person perspective virtual full body illusion from 8-12-year-old children and adults, while manipulating synchrony of the avatar’s movements (synchronous, 0.5 s, 1 s delay compared to the participant’s movements), and appearance of the avatar (human or skeleton). We measured embodiment with both subjective questionnaires and objective skin conductance responses to virtual threat. Results showed that children experienced ownership for the virtual avatar in a similar way to adults, which was reduced with increasing asynchrony, and for the skeleton avatar as compared to the human avatar. This modulation of ownership was not reflected in the skin conductance responses, which were equally high in all experimental conditions and only showed a modulation of repetition by age. Contrastingly, in children, the subjective experience of agency was less affected by the dampening effects of visuomotor asynchrony or reduced human likeness, and overall higher. These findings suggest that children can easily embody a virtual avatar, but that different aspects of embodiment develop at different rates, which could have important implications for applications of embodied virtual reality.

scholarly journals Behavioral Triggers of Skin Conductance Responses and Their Neural Correlates in the Primate Amygdala

2009 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 1749-1754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Laine ◽  
Kevin M. Spitler ◽  
Clayton P. Mosher ◽  
Katalin M. Gothard
Keyword(s):  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Single Unit ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Emotional Reaction ◽  
Neural Population ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Indirect Measure ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
The Right ◽  
Sympathetic Arousal

The amygdala plays a crucial role in evaluating the emotional significance of stimuli and in transforming the results of this evaluation into appropriate autonomic responses. Lesion and stimulation studies suggest involvement of the amygdala in the generation of the skin conductance response (SCR), which is an indirect measure of autonomic activity that has been associated with both emotion and attention. It is unclear if this involvement marks an emotional reaction to an external stimulus or sympathetic arousal regardless of its origin. We recorded skin conductance in parallel with single-unit activity from the right amygdala of two rhesus monkeys during a rewarded image viewing task and while the monkeys sat alone in a dimly lit room, drifting in and out of sleep. In both experimental conditions, we found similar SCR-related modulation of activity at the single-unit and neural population level. This suggests that the amygdala contributes to the production or modulation of SCRs regardless of the source of sympathetic arousal.

scholarly journals Salience Network Connectivity Modulates Skin Conductance Responses in Predicting Arousal Experience

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 827-836 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenjie Xia ◽  
Alexandra Touroutoglou ◽  
Karen S. Quigley ◽  
Lisa Feldman Barrett ◽  
Bradford C. Dickerson
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Network Connectivity ◽  
Resting State Fmri ◽  
Salience Network ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Additional Variance ◽  
Connectivity Strength

Individual differences in arousal experience have been linked to differences in resting-state salience network connectivity strength. In this study, we investigated how adding task-related skin conductance responses (SCR), a measure of sympathetic autonomic nervous system activity, can predict additional variance in arousal experience. Thirty-nine young adults rated their subjective experience of arousal to emotionally evocative images while SCRs were measured. They also underwent a separate resting-state fMRI scan. Greater SCR reactivity (an increased number of task-related SCRs) to emotional images and stronger intrinsic salience network connectivity independently predicted more intense experiences of arousal. Salience network connectivity further moderated the effect of SCR reactivity: In individuals with weak salience network connectivity, SCR reactivity more significantly predicted arousal experience, whereas in those with strong salience network connectivity, SCR reactivity played little role in predicting arousal experience. This interaction illustrates the degeneracy in neural mechanisms driving individual differences in arousal experience and highlights the intricate interplay between connectivity in central visceromotor neural circuitry and peripherally expressed autonomic responses in shaping arousal experience.

Affective Context of Sadness and Physiological Response Patterns

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry M. Davydov ◽  
Emmanuelle Zech ◽  
Olivier Luminet
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Skin Conductance Level ◽  
Pulse Transit Time ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Facial Behavior ◽  
Facial Activity ◽  
Negative Feelings

This study was conducted to test the hypothesis that two films that induce a sad feeling would elicit different physiological responses depending on an additional context of the film contents related to either avoidance (disgust) or attachment (tenderness). Reactivity was evaluated for facial behavior, heart rate, pulse transit time, skin conductance, and subjective experience. Participants reported feeling less happy and showed increased facial activity related to the sad content of both films. The sad film related to avoidance induced an increase in skin conductance level and response rate. In contrast, the sad film related to attachment induced a decrease in amplitude of skin conductance responses and heart rate. The study showed that while the common sad content of both films disturbed mood or provoked negative feelings, additional affective contexts induced either a decrease or an increase in physiological arousal.

scholarly journals Contributions of Body-Orientation to Mental Ball Dropping Task During Out-of-Body Experiences

2022 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ege Tekgün ◽  
Burak Erdeniz
Keyword(s):  
Body Position ◽  
Body Orientation ◽  
First Person ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
Full Body ◽  
Virtual Avatar

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) provide fascinating insights into our understanding of bodily self-consciousness and the workings of the brain. Studies that examined individuals with brain lesions reported that OBEs are generally characterized by participants experiencing themselves outside their physical body (i.e., disembodied feeling) (Blanke and Arzy, 2005). Based on such a characterization, it has been shown that it is possible to create virtual OBEs in immersive virtual environments (Ehrsson, 2007; Ionta et al., 2011b; Bourdin et al., 2017). However, the extent to which body-orientation influences virtual OBEs is not well-understood. Thus, in the present study, 30 participants (within group design) experienced a full-body ownership illusion (synchronous visuo-tactile stimulation only) induced with a gender-matched full-body virtual avatar seen from the first-person perspective (1PP). At the beginning of the experiment, participants performed a mental ball dropping (MBD) task, seen from the location of their virtual avatar, to provide a baseline measurement. After this, a full-body ownership illusion (embodiment phase) was induced in all participants. This was followed by the virtual OBE illusion phase of the experiment (disembodiment phase) in which the first-person viewpoint was switched to a third-person perspective (3PP), and participants' disembodied viewpoint was gradually raised to 14 m above the virtual avatar, from which altitude they repeated the MBD task. During the experiment, this procedure was conducted twice, and the participants were allocated first to the supine or the standing body position at random. Results of the MBD task showed that the participants experienced increased MBD durations during the supine condition compared to the standing condition. Furthermore, although the findings from the subjective reports confirmed the previous findings of virtual OBEs, no significant difference between the two postures was found for body ownership. Taken together, the findings of the current study make further contributions to our understanding of both the vestibular system and time perception during OBEs.

Lying and perception of lies by bilingual speakers

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (05) ◽  
pp. 1313-1329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Kreyßig ◽  
Agnieszka Ewa Krautz
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
English Second Language ◽  
Task Requirements

AbstractMultiple studies on bilingualism and emotions have demonstrated that a native language carries greater emotional valence than the second language. This distinction appears to have consequences for other types of behavior, including lying. As bilingual lying has not been explored extensively, the current study investigated the psychophysiological differences between German (native language) and English (second language) in the lying process as well as in the perception of lies. The skin conductance responses of 26 bilinguals were measured during reading aloud true and false statements and listening to recorded correct and wrong assertions. The analysis revealed a lie effect, that is, statistically significant differences between valid and fictitious sentences. In addition, the values in German were higher compared to those in English, in accordance with the blunted emotional response account (Caldwell-Harris & Aycicegi-Dinn, 2009). Finally, the skin conductance responses were lower in the listening condition in comparison to the reading aloud. The results, however, are treated with caution given the fact that skin conductance monitoring does not allow assigning heightened reactivity of the skin to one exclusive cause. The responses may have been equally induced by the content of the statements, which prompted positive or negative associations in the participants’ minds or by the specific task requirements.

scholarly journals Experiential ownership and body ownership are different phenomena

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Caleb Liang ◽  
Wen-Hsiang Lin ◽  
Tai-Yuan Chang ◽  
Chi-Hong Chen ◽  
Chen-Wei Wu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Distinct Type ◽  
Body Part ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Rubber Hand ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
The One ◽  
First Time ◽  
Full Body

AbstractBody ownership concerns what it is like to feel a body part or a full body as mine, and has become a prominent area of study. We propose that there is a closely related type of bodily self-consciousness largely neglected by researchers—experiential ownership. It refers to the sense that I am the one who is having a conscious experience. Are body ownership and experiential ownership actually the same phenomenon or are they genuinely different? In our experiments, the participant watched a rubber hand or someone else’s body from the first-person perspective and was touched either synchronously or asynchronously. The main findings: (1) The sense of body ownership was hindered in the asynchronous conditions of both the body-part and the full-body experiments. However, a strong sense of experiential ownership was observed in those conditions. (2) We found the opposite when the participants’ responses were measured after tactile stimulations had ceased for 5 s. In the synchronous conditions of another set of body-part and full-body experiments, only experiential ownership was blocked but not body ownership. These results demonstrate for the first time the double dissociation between body ownership and experiential ownership. Experiential ownership is indeed a distinct type of bodily self-consciousness.

Latency of skin conductance responses across stimulus modalities

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. e13307 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Sjouwerman ◽  
T. B. Lonsdorf
Keyword(s):  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Stimulus Modalities

scholarly journals Identification of Emotions in Offenders With Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASP)

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-16
Author(s):  
Catarina Iria ◽  
Fernando Barbosa ◽  
Rui Paixão
Keyword(s):  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Antisocial Personality Disorder ◽  
Monetary Reward ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Antisocial Personality ◽  
Response Cost ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Facial Expressions Of Emotion

Abstract. A group of offenders with antisocial personality (ASP) and a control group identified facial expressions of emotion under three conditions: monetary reward, monetary response cost, and no contingency, to explore effects on the antisocial offenders’ deficits commonly reported in these tasks. Skin Conductance Responses (SCRs) indexed emotional arousal. Offenders with ASP performed worse than controls under reward and no contingency conditions, but under the response-cost condition results were similar. The offenders with ASP presented higher SCR than the controls in the two monetary conditions. Findings suggest that offenders with ASP are hypersensitive to monetary contingencies; monetary reward seems to interfere negatively in their performance while monetary response cost improves it. Arousal level seems unable to explain ability to identify facial affects, while results suggest that methodological variations may explain the conflicting results in the literature.

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