Body ownership

Body ownership Body Ownership The sense of one’s own body has been a subject of debate among researchers for many years. It is argued to be a very specific type of knowledge, illustrated as being a non-conceptual and somatic (e.g., Kant, 1781/2003; Bermu ´ dezas cited in Lango, et al., 2007). It has been argued that this type of knowledge, often referred to as ‘‘embodiment† (Arzy, Overney, Landis, Legrand, 2006), or ‘‘corporeal awareness† (Berlucchi Critchley, 1979) is compulsory, to experience various types of sensory information (Kant, 1781/2003; Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987; Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962; Piaget, 1937/1954 as cited in Lango, et al., 2007). In other words, one has to have some sort of knowledge of one’s own body in order to experience emotions and sensations. It has been argued that gaining this type of knowledge is crucial for formation of personal psychological identity (Cassam,1997; Edelman, 2004). Rubber hand illusion allows for the manipulating the brain into perceiving an external object- the rubber hand, as being a representation of the body (Tsakiris &Haggard, 2005). Self awareness has been argued to be mostly represented by the sense of the body ownership. Moseley( et al., 2008) provoked the rubber hand illusion and demonstrated one of rubber hand illusion’s effects- taking ownership of an artificial counterpart- which leads to decrease in the temperature in the real hand. They found that this phenomenon was limb-specific, in other words similar effect have not been found to occur in the not stimulated hand. They argued that this is phenomenon is demonstrating that physical self and the physiological regulation of self are closely linked in the top down manner to an individual’s body awareness. It also seems likely that if body awareness is disrupted by cognitive processes, that might lead to changes in the body temperature regulations, in the rubber hand illusion case, making it de crease. This therefore leads to conclusion that if an individual’s starts perceiving and artificial body part it will have an effect on the rest of the body (Moseley, 2008). Body ownership has been argued to be a sort of knowledge that that your body belongs to you, and is constantly there, is a basis for the aspect of self-awareness. Individuals suffering from for example schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, neuropathic pain, anorexia nervosa, and bulimia have been found to have a disturbance in their body ownership. These disorders have also been found to have a connection to the disruption of the body temperature regulations (Moseley, 2008). Moseley (et al., 2008) has demonstrated that such disruption in the body ownership can be a consequence of a Rubber Hand Illusion. RHI consequences in participant’s perception that the touch they are experiencing is actually an effect of the stimulation given to the rubber hand. That consequence in participant’s taking an o wnership of the rubber hand. Additionally, Moseley (et al., 2008) found that there was a positive correlation between the vividness of the rubber hand illusion experience and the decrease in the skin temperature in the adequate hand. This suggests that the more an individual experiences the RHI the more will the temperature in their hand decrease.