Staying in touch with our bodies: Stronger sense of ownership during self- compared to other touch despite temporal mismatches

Self-touch is considered important for bodily self-consciousness and self-other distinction has been reported to improve clinical symptoms of disembodiment. To investigate the link between self-touch disembodiment in healthy participants, we studied effect versus touch produced by another person (other-touch) on experimentally induced In a mixed reality paradigm, across two experiments, participants could see their own body surroundings with controllable visual delay either stroked hand paintbrush or were it experimenter. Experiment 1 first assessed sensitivity temporal multimodal mismatches delay-induced changes sense ownership three conditions, namely self-touch, other-touch hidden-self-touch (visually occluding touching hand). second block, compared phenomenological physiological (threat response) measures conditions. 2 roughly replicated block but included condition which performed gesture without hand. Such experiment attempted control potential role efferent signals. Our results show that increasing generally enhances feeling disembodiment, yet decrease less pronounced during self-touch. For however, diverging findings are discussed. This study provides evidence importance sustaining context