Bodily ownership and self-location: Components of bodily self-consciousness

Citation

Serino A, Alsmith A, Costantini M, Mandrigin A, Tajadura-Jimenez A & Lopez C (2013) Bodily ownership and self-location: Components of bodily self-consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition, 22 (4), pp. 1239-1252. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2013.08.013

Abstract
Recent research on bodily self-consciousness has assumed that it consists of three distinct components: the experience of owning a body (body ownership); the experience of being a body with a given location within the environment (self-location); and the experience of taking a first-person, body-centered, perspective on that environment (perspective). Here we review recent neuroimaging studies suggesting that at least two of these components—body ownership and self-location—are implemented in rather distinct neural substrates, located, respectively, in the premotor cortex and in the temporo-parietal junction. We examine these results and consider them in relation to clinical evidence from patients with altered body perception and work on a variety of multisensory, body-related illusions, such as the rubber hand illusion, the full body illusion, the body swap illusion and the enfacement illusion. We conclude by providing a preliminary synthesis of the data on bodily self-consciousness and its neural correlates.

Keywords
Bodily self-consciousness; Body representation; Body ownership; Self-location; Multisensory processing

Journal
Consciousness and Cognition: Volume 22, Issue 4