Instant disembodiment of virtual body parts

Evidence from multisensory body illusions suggests that body representations may be malleable, for instance, by embodyingexternal objects. However, adjusting body representations to current task demands also implies that external objects becomedisembodied from the body representation if they are no longer required. In the current web-based study, we induced theembodiment of a two-dimensional (2D) virtual hand that could be controlled by active movements of a computer mouse or ona touchpad. Following initial embodiment, we probed for disembodiment by comparing two conditions: Participants eithercontinued moving the virtual hand or they stopped moving and kept the hand still. Based on theoretical accounts that conceptualizebody representations as a set of multisensory bindings, we expected gradual disembodiment of the virtual hand if the bodyrepresentations are no longer updated through correlated visuomotor signals. In contrast to our prediction, the virtual hand wasinstantly disembodied as soon as participants stopped moving it. This result was replicated in two follow-up experiments. Theobserved instantaneous disembodiment might suggest that humans are sensitive to the rapid changes that characterize action andbody in virtual environments, and hence adjust corresponding body representations particularly swiftly.CC BY 4.0Published: 31 August 2022© 2022 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Part of Springer Nature.Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This research was founded by the German Research Foundation, DFG (PF 853/ 8-1).