Sensing the body, representing the body: Evidence from a neurologically based delusion of body ownership

ABSTRACT

Humans experience their own body as unitary and monolithic in nature. However, recent findings in cognitive neuroscience seem to suggest that body awareness has a complex and multifaceted structure that can be dissociated in several subcomponents, possibly underpinned by different brain circuits. In the present paper, we focus on a recently reported neuropsychological disorder of body ownership in which patients misattribute to themselves someone else’s arm and its movements. As first, we briefly review the clinical and functional features of this disorder. Secondly, we attempt to explain the nature of the delusion and to gain new hints regarding the mechanisms subserving the construction and the maintenance of the sense of body ownership in the intact brain functioning.

KEYWORDS:

• Body representation
• delusional body ownership
• bodily self
• brain-damaged patients

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Lorenzo Pia http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0360-3152

Francesca Garbarini http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1210-0175

Carlotta Fossataro http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8145-006X

Dalila Burin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9884-7650

Anna Berti http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9972-5543

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a San Paolo Grant [grant number AB: 1/2014/B1] and a MIUR-PRIN (Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universit? della Ricerca-Progetti di Ricerca di Interesse Nazionale) [grant number AB: F.S.7.07.07.60].