Bodily self-relatedness in vicarious touch is reflected at early cortical processing stages.
Studies have suggested that there is a strong link between the bodily self and the mechanisms underlying vicarious representations. Here, we used somatosensory ERPs to investigate the temporal dynamics of vicarious touch for stimuli that are more or less related to one's own body (human hands vs. rubber gloves). We found that vicarious touch effects were restricted to self-relatable events (human hands) at early implicit stages of somatosensory processing (P45). At later more cognitive stages of processing (late positive complex, LPC), the vicarious touch effect was stronger for self-relatable events (touch on human hands) than nonself-relatable events (touch on rubber gloves) but present f…
Detached and distracted: ERP correlates of altered attentional function in depersonalisation.
Abstract Depersonalisation (DP) is a psychological condition marked by feelings of disembodiment. In everyday life, it is frequently associated with concentration problems. The present study used visual event-related potentials (ERPs) in a Posner-type spatial cueing task with valid, invalid and spatially neutral cues to delineate the potential neurophysiological correlates of these concentration problems. Altered attentional functioning at early, sensory stages was found in DP patients but not in anxiety- and depression-matched psychosomatic patients without DP. Specifically, DP was associated with decreased suppression of stimuli at unattended locations, shown as absent processing costs fo…
Is that me in the mirror? Depersonalisation modulates tactile mirroring mechanisms
Our sense of self is thought to develop through sensory-motor contingencies provided, not only by observing one's own body, but also by mirroring interactions with others. This suggests that there is a strong link between mirroring mechanisms and the bodily self. The present study tested whether this link is expressed at early, implicit stages of the mirroring process or at later, more cognitive stages. We also provide, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of how inter-individual differences in our sense of bodily self may affect mirroring mechanisms. We used somatosensory event-related potentials (SEPs) to investigate the temporal dynamics of mirroring highly self-related …
Object-Guided Spatial Selection in Touch Without Concurrent Changes in the Perceived Location of the Hands
In an endogenous cueing paradigm with central visual cues, observers made speeded responses to tactile targets at the hands, which were either close together or far apart, and holding either two separate objects or one common object between them. When the hands were far apart, the response time costs associated with attending to the wrong hand were reduced when attention had to be shifted along one object jointly held by both hands compared to when it was shifted over the same distance but across separate objects. Similar reductions in attentional costs were observed when the hands were placed closer together, suggesting that processing at one hand is less prioritized over that at another …