Corpus gnarus the experienced bodily self

In the rubber hand illusion (RHI), watching a rubber hand being stroked synchronously to one's own, unseen hand, creates the compelling experience of ownership over the artificial hand. I induced the RHI in participants watching an egocentrically placed rubber hand that was stroked in synchrony or asynchrony with the biological hand. Two further conditions examined the illusory effect a) when the rubber hand was placed allocentrically (rotated 180°; 'Allocentric') to the participant, and b) when the rubber hand was placed egocentrically but seen only through a mirror (‘Mirror'), resulting in a identical visual input as the directly-viewed, allocentric condition. I replicated previous results on the 'classical' RHI: participants showed significantly greater introspective and behavioural responses in the Synchronous compared to the Asynchronous and Allocentric conditions. In addition, my preliminary findings show that a mirror-view of the rubber hand elicits a greater illusory effect than the 'no-ownership' effect evident in the Allocentric orientation, suggesting that background knowledge of the hand's true position plays a role in the induction of the RHI. The implications of these results for the current models of bodily ownership are discussed.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo