Body ownership promotes visual awareness

The sense of ownership of one’s body is important for survival, e.g., in defending the body against a threat. However, in addition to affecting behavior, it also affects perception of the world. In the case of visuospatial perception, it has been shown that the sense of ownership causes external space to be perceptually scaled according to the size of the body. Here, we investigated the effect of ownership on another fundamental aspect of visual perception: visual awareness. In two binocular rivalry experiments, we manipulated the sense of ownership of a stranger’s hand through visuotactile stimulation while that hand was one of the rival stimuli. The results show that ownership, but not mere visuotactile stimulation, increases the dominance of the hand percept. This effect is due to a combination of longer perceptual dominance durations and shorter suppression durations. Together, these results suggest that the sense of body ownership promotes visual awareness.

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Body ownership and agency altered by an electromyographically controlled robotic arm

Royal Society Open Science ◽

10.1098/rsos.172170 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 5 (5) ◽

pp. 172170 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Yuki Sato ◽

Toshihiro Kawase ◽

Kouji Takano ◽

Charles Spence ◽

Kenji Kansaku

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

The Body ◽

Sense Of Agency ◽

Robotic Arm ◽

Body Ownership ◽

Fundamental Issue ◽

Rubber Hand ◽

Sense Of Ownership ◽

Robotic Prosthesis ◽

Wrist Flexors

Understanding how we consciously experience our bodies is a fundamental issue in cognitive neuroscience. Two fundamental components of this are the sense of body ownership (the experience of the body as one's own) and the sense of agency (the feeling of control over one's bodily actions). These constructs have been used to investigate the incorporation of prostheses. To date, however, no evidence has been provided showing whether representations of ownership and agency in amputees are altered when operating a robotic prosthesis. Here we investigated a robotic arm using myoelectric control, for which the user varied the joint position continuously, in a rubber hand illusion task. Fifteen able-bodied participants and three trans-radial amputees were instructed to contract their wrist flexors/extensors alternately, and to watch the robotic arm move. The sense of ownership in both groups was extended to the robotic arm when the wrists of the real and robotic arm were flexed/extended synchronously, with the effect being smaller when they moved in opposite directions. Both groups also experienced a sense of agency over the robotic arm. These results suggest that these experimental settings induced successful incorporation of the prosthesis, at least for the amputees who took part in the present study.

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Proprioceptive Perception: An Emergence of the Interaction of Body and Language

10.5772/intechopen.95461 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Alejandra Vasquez-Rosati ◽

Carmen Cordero-Homad

Keyword(s):

Human Behavior ◽

The Body ◽

Emotional States ◽

Complex Phenomenon ◽

External Space ◽

Cognitive States ◽

The World ◽

Close Relationship ◽

The Relationship ◽

Behavior And Cognition

This chapter provides a systemic perspective of human behavior, which reformulates the concept of effective behavior and cognition that derive from the classical vision of neuroscience and psychology based on the Cartesian reductionist functionalist paradigm. This systemic perspective, which is based on the theory of autopoiesis, proposes that the act of perceiving proprioception is decisive in the capacity of the human being to differentiate himself from an external space within which he is situated; a phenomenon that we will denominate “proprioceptive perception”. This complex phenomenon of dynamic character emerges from the relationship between the domains of the body and language in the individual’s relationship with their environment. Furthermore, from this systemic perspective, we will present the emotional states as cognitive states necessary for the conservation of the individual’s living identity and the close relationship they have with the sensorimotor patterns and proprioceptive perception. This chapter answers the question of how proprioceptive perception affects the human being’s experience of being different from others and from the environment in which they find themselves, having the possibility of being aware of themselves and of the world they perceive - in a present - within the environment in which they find themselves. And it explains how this phenomenon modulates its modes of emotion in congruence with what occurs in its present.

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Silent Bodies: Japanese taciturnity and image thinking

Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology ◽

10.21301/eap.v12i1.5 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 113

Author(s):

Ana Došen

Keyword(s):

Visual Perception ◽

Japanese Society ◽

The Body ◽

Theoretical Perspectives ◽

Theatrical Performance ◽

Japanese Art ◽

The World ◽

Art Forms ◽

Communicative Act ◽

East And West

A nonverbal transmission and an implicit way of communication are highly encouraged in Japanese society. The reason for this “silence prerogative” is often found in historical facts of lengthy feudal era or in ancient philosophies and religions such as Buddhism and Confucianism and their various concepts which privilege taciturn way of communication. Moreover, the unspoken comprehension is often complemented by the attitude which equates truthfulness with silence. This paper explores the silence as a communicative act in the domain of Japanese art, where the body takes over the place of the language. In traditional Japanese theatrical performance, such as noh, words are often inadequate to convey emotion and therefore the aesthetics of emptiness, understatement and abstraction is transcended by the masks with "nonmoving lips". Drawing on theoretical perspectives from both East and West, I argue that the silent bodies operate as deliberate and integral determinants of Japanese non-silent art forms – especially in cinema and theatre. In the Eastern thought, visual perception is fundamental in cognition of the world, whereas auditory discernment is secondary to "image-thinking" (Yuasa). Accustomed to taciturnity, Japanese audience effectively corresponds to the performance and "completes" it in silence.

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Face Perception In Tetrastable Visual Awareness

10.31234/osf.io/urg27 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Ahmad Yousef

Keyword(s):

Visual Perception ◽

Face Perception ◽

Binocular Rivalry ◽

Human Subjects ◽

Visual Awareness ◽

Good Measure ◽

Affective Psychology ◽

Human Faces

This article combines monocular rivalry with binocular rivalry in one setting. Astonishingly, this combination allows the human subjects to be visually aware about four different stable perceptions. Namely, they are aware of the two human faces, the vase, the duck, and the rabbit face in one setting. The visual awareness was stable with almost no mixed percepts. This experiment is a good measure of tetrastable visual perception for affective psychology and neuroscience, because it considers the perception of faces.

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Weakening the subjective sensation of own hand ownership does not interfere with rapid finger movements

10.31219/osf.io/uckhf ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Arran T Reader ◽

H. Henrik Ehrsson

Keyword(s):

Reaction Time ◽

Motor System ◽

Index Finger ◽

Sensory Stimulation ◽

The Body ◽

Hand Movements ◽

Finger Movements ◽

Sense Of Ownership ◽

The World ◽

Subjective Sensation

When we perform a movement we generally have a clear distinction between which parts of the world constitute our body and which parts do not. However, how the sense of ownership over our body supports movement is not yet fully understood. We aimed to see whether a sense of ownership over the hand supports the performance of rapid hand movements. In three experiments (n=48, n=30, n=24), we presented participants with congruent and incongruent visuotactile and visuoproprioceptive information regarding their own hand. In keeping with previous experiments, multisensory disintegration resulted in a reduction in the subjective sensation of ownership over the hand, as reflected in questionnaire responses. Following sensory stimulation, participants were required to rapidly abduct their index finger whilst the movement was tracked. We examined the hypothesis that, should a sense of ownership over the limb be necessary for generating rapid movements with that limb, reaction time would increase when hand ownership was reduced, whilst the acceleration and velocity of the movement would decrease. We observed that reductions in own hand ownership did not interfere with rapid index finger abduction, suggesting that the motor system may not be reliant on a subjective sense of ownership over the body in order to generate movement.

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Incorporating others: what an extended self tells us about intersubjectivity

Adaptive Behavior ◽

10.1177/1059712318789921 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 27 (1) ◽

pp. 47-59 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Maria Clara Garavito

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Processes ◽

Extended Mind ◽

The Body ◽

The Self ◽

Lived Body ◽

Extended Self ◽

Sense Of Ownership ◽

The World ◽

Lively Debate ◽

The Subject

Incorporation is the body’s capacity to take something to alter or extend itself. In the literature on the subject, there is a lively debate on what constitutes incorporation. According to the Hypothesis of Extended Mind, whatever extends our cognitive processes is incorporated. At the same time, that object becomes a part of our self-manifestation. However, De Preester, in what I call a narrow version of incorporation, proposes that an object is incorporated to the self only if it is included in the sense of ownership of the body. Here, I explore a broader version of incorporation, related to Merleau-Ponty’s ideas of habit and incorporation. From this perspective, incorporation is the way a self expands and alters itself in its dealings with the world. A self, as a lived body, emerges in the self’s constitutive openness to worlds; therefore, objects (and even others) are incorporated in a temporal and situated way if they participate in constitutive experiences. Finally, this perspective explores the idea of a flexible and transparent self rather than a fixed self based on representations of the body.

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Body ownership affects visual perception of object size by rescaling the visual representation of external space

Attention Perception & Psychophysics ◽

10.3758/s13414-014-0664-9 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 76 (5) ◽

pp. 1414-1428 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Björn van der Hoort ◽

H. Henrik Ehrsson

Keyword(s):

Visual Perception ◽

Visual Representation ◽

Body Ownership ◽

Object Size ◽

External Space

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Merleau-Ponty e Cézanne

Chiasmi International ◽

10.5840/chiasmi20202225 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 22 ◽

pp. 235-248

Author(s):

Edoardo Fugali ◽

Keyword(s):

Visual Perception ◽

Natural Extension ◽

The Body ◽

The Other ◽

Phenomenological Reduction ◽

Other Hand ◽

Reconstructive Process ◽

Action Painting ◽

The World

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the intrinsically technical nature of visual perception and pictorial performance through their common anchorage in the corporeity that brings them into existence. As with any other artistic technique, painting reveals itself to be the natural extension of a technological attitude already rooted in the sensorimotor devices of the body in action; painting is led to inhabit a world that is of the same nature as corporeal agents, because the objects that populate it share with it the ontological element of the “flesh”. Through Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of Cezanne’s pictorial works, I demonstrate that the main purpose of painting is, analogically with the descriptive analyses made possible by the phenomenological reduction, to render intersubjectively evident the hidden work of vision before its sedimentation in an accomplished perceptual scene. As the experiments of contemporary neuroscience also demonstrate, perception is by and large a reconstructive process of “image-making” rather than an allegedly accurate reproduction of the spectacle of the world. Painting, on the other hand, both in terms of creation and for the observer, employs the same sensorimotor resources as instruments.

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Scanning electron microscopy of freeze-fractured prescapular lymph node of caprine

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100111331 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 42 ◽

pp. 244-245

Author(s):

O. Faroon ◽

F. Al-Bagdadi ◽

T. G. Snider ◽

C. Titkemeyer

Keyword(s):

Lymph Node ◽

Lymph Nodes ◽

Lymphatic System ◽

Three Dimensional ◽

Meat Products ◽

The Body ◽

Morphological Data ◽

The World ◽

Cellular Constituent ◽

Scanning Electron

The lymphatic system is very important in the immunological activities of the body. Clinicians confirm the diagnosis of infectious diseases by palpating the involved cutaneous lymph node for changes in size, heat, and consistency. Clinical pathologists diagnose systemic diseases through biopsies of superficial lymph nodes. In many parts of the world the goat is considered as an important source of milk and meat products.The lymphatic system has been studied extensively. These studies lack precise information on the natural morphology of the lymph nodes and their vascular and cellular constituent. This is due to using improper technique for such studies. A few studies used the SEM, conducted by cutting the lymph node with a blade. The morphological data collected by this method are artificial and do not reflect the normal three dimensional surface of the examined area of the lymph node. SEM has been used to study the lymph vessels and lymph nodes of different animals. No information on the cutaneous lymph nodes of the goat has ever been collected using the scanning electron microscope.

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