Rubber Hand Illusion does not arise from comparisons with internal body models: a new multisensory integration account of the sense of ownership
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Abstract
Human body sense is surprisingly flexible – precisely administered multisensory stimulation may result in the illusion that an external object is part of one’s body. There seems to be a general consensus that there are certain top-down constraints on which objects may be incorporated: in particular, to-be-embodied objects should be structurally similar to a visual representation stored in an internal body model for a shift in one’s body image to occur. However, empirical evidence contradicts the body model hypothesis: the sense of ownership may be spread over objects strikingly distinct in morphology and structure (e.g., robotic arms or empty space) and direct empirical support for the theory is currently lacking. As an alternative, based on the example of the rubber hand illusion (RHI), I propose a multisensory integration account of how the sense of ownership is induced. In this account, the perception of one’s own body is a regular type of multisensory perception and multisensory integration processes are not only necessary but also sufficient for embodiment. In this paper, I propose how RHI can be modeled with the use of Maximum Likelihood Estimation and natural correlation rules. I also discuss how Bayesian Coupling Priors and idiosyncrasies in sensory processing render prior distributions interindividually variable, accounting for large interindividual differences in susceptibility to RHI. Taken together, the proposed model accounts for exceptional malleability of human body perception, fortifies existing bottom-up multisensory integration theories with top-down models of relatedness of sensory cues, and generates testable and disambiguating predictions.
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2018. Rubber Hand Illusion does not arise from comparisons with internal body models: a new multisensory integration account of the sense of ownership. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27136v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27136v1Author comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Piotr Litwin prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
This is a hypothesis & theory / opinion type of article. The research in this article did not generate any data or code.
Funding
The project was funded by the National Science Centre (Poland) research grant under the decision DEC-2014/14/E/HS1/00803. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
