Bodily illusions: phenomenology, mechanisms, experimental models

Abstract

The article reviews bodily illusion studies. Bodily illusions are multisensory phenomena that occur in somatosensory system as a result of special perception conditions. Experimental models of these illusions and underlying body perception mechanisms are summarized. Local illusions (“rubber hand illusion”, “enfacement illusion”, etc.), and full body illusions (“body-swap illusion”, “out-of-body-experience”, etc.) are described. Experiments are grouped by major body scheme changes: artificial object ownership; body characteristics distortion; body schema element adding (doubling). Phenomena observed during these experiments are compared with various neurological and psychopathological symptoms of body perception.