Bodily self-consciousness can be conspicuously modified by pathological and physiological factors. An example of a body-part-specific self-identity disorder is the feeling that one’s own limb does not belong to oneself. These complex misperceptions and misconceptions are comparatively common after cerebral lesions in the right temporo-parietal lobe and typically affect

the left limb (Berlucchi and Aglioti, 2010). Patients with disruptions in full-body self-awareness, generally referred to as autoscopic phenomena (AP), report Gemcitabine in vivo bizarre feelings and exhibit strange behaviors that mimic psychiatric more than neurological disease symptomologies. AP are characterized by the illusory sensation of a second body seen in extracorporeal Selleckchem PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor space. At least three different forms of AP have been described, namely autoscopic hallucination (the person sees a

second own body with self-location normally anchored to the physical body), heautoscopy (self-location is perceived at both the physical and the illusory body), and out-of-body experience (OBE) characterized by a sense of disembodiment, with the illusory body, to which self-location is attributed, perceived in a position elevated with respect to the physical body (Blanke and Metzinger, 2009). Studies of patients with OBEs suggest that the feeling of being outside the real body and looking at the world from another perspective might be linked to temporo-parietal and vestibulo-insular brain dysfunction (Blanke and Metzinger, 2009). Tellingly, OBEs, as well as the somatosensory feeling that someone else is close to ADAMTS5 us even if nobody is around, have been induced by electrical stimulation of the temporo-parietal regions (Blanke and Metzinger, 2009 and Arzy et al., 2006). Our clear and stable sense of bodily self-consciousness

can also be challenged by simple psychophysical manipulations. For example, touch stimuli delivered to one’s visually obscured or “unseen” hand while observing the synchronous stroking of a seen rubber hand induces the subjective perception that the rubber hand belongs to oneself (rubber hand illusion, Botvinick and Cohen, 1998 and Ehrsson et al., 2004). Inclusion of an inanimate rubber hand into one’s own body representation is not observed when a time lag between visually perceived and physically sensed tactile stimulation is introduced (asynchronous stimulation condition, Botvinick and Cohen, 1998). Using a similar visuo-tactile stimulation paradigm and virtual reality techniques, Lenggenhager et al. (2007) have been able to induce the subjective feeling of whole-body self-identification with an avatar.