Back
Full-text
Journal article

Body ownership: When feeling and knowing diverge.

  • Romano D Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy; NeuroMi - Milan Center for Neuroscience, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
  • Sedda A Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
  • Brugger P Department of Neurology, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Center for Integrative Human Physiology (ZIHP), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
  • Bottini G Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy; Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre, Niguarda Ca' Granda Hospital, Milano, Italy. Electronic address: g.bottini@unipv.it.
  • 2015-05-09
Published in:
  • Consciousness and cognition. - 2015
BIID
Body
Body representation
Consciousness
Ownership
Pain anticipation
Self awareness
Self consciousness
Somatoparaphrenia
Xenomelia
Adult
Agnosia
Anticipation, Psychological
Body Image
Extremities
Female
Galvanic Skin Response
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Touch Perception
English Individuals with the peculiar disturbance of 'overcompleteness' experience an intense desire to amputate one of their healthy limbs, describing a sense of disownership for it (Body Integrity Identity Disorder - BIID). This condition is similar to somatoparaphrenia, the acquired delusion that one's own limb belongs to someone else. In ten individuals with BIID, we measured skin conductance response to noxious stimuli, delivered to the accepted and non-accepted limb, touching the body part or simulating the contact (stimuli approach the body without contacting it), hypothesizing that these individuals have responses like somatoparaphrenic patients, who previously showed reduced pain anticipation, when the threat was directed to the disowned limb. We found reduced anticipatory response to stimuli approaching, but not contacting, the unwanted limb. Conversely, stimuli contacting the non-accepted body-part, induced stronger SCR than those contacting the healthy parts, suggesting that feeling of ownership is critically related to a proper processing of incoming threats.
Language
  • English
Open access status
green
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/96688
Statistics
Document views: 30 File downloads:
  • Full-text: 0