Extending the self: some cold truths on body ownership

By Alexander De Foe

“Who are you?” Some might ponder this question philosophically, while others will answer straightforwardly: “I am my body and my personality”. But the boundaries of “self” are not as straightforward as we might think. In a newly-published paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Joan Llobera, Maria V. Sanchez-Vives and Mel Slater demonstrate a body-ownership illusion in which participants' virtual and physical bodies integrate into the same “body matrix” – a finding that breaks new ground in this burgeoning field of research. [Read more] ...