Bodily self: an implicit knowledge of what is explicitly unknown

Abstract

We tested the hypothesis that the body selfadvantage, i.e., the facilitation in discriminating self versus other people's body-eVectors, is the expression of an implicit and body-speciWc knowledge, based mainly on the sensorimotor representation of one's own body-eVectors. Alternatively, the body self-advantage could rely on visual recognition of pictorial cues. According to the Wrst hypothesis, using gray-scale pictures of body-parts, the body selfadvantage should emerge when self-body recognition is implicitly required and should be speciWc for body-eVectors and not for inanimate-objects. In contrast, if the self-advantage is due to a mere visual-perceptual facilitation, it should be independent of the implicit or explicit request (and could be extended also to objects). To disentangle these hypotheses, healthy participants were implicitly or explicitly required to recognize either their own body-eVectors or inanimate-objects. Participants were more accurate in the implicit task with self rather than with others' bodyeVectors. In contrast, the self-advantage was not found when an explicit recognition of one's own body-eVectors was required, suggesting that the body self-advantage relies upon a sensorimotor, rather than a mere visual representation of one's own body. Moreover, the absence of both self/ other and implicit/explicit eVects, when processing inanimate-objects, underlines the diVerences between the body and other objects.

Psychopathology of the Bodily Self and the Brain: The Case of Schizophrenia

“…In a recent study [53] we showed that implicit knowledge about the bodily self is impaired and that self-other discrimination is problematic in first-episode schizophrenia patients that were submitted to the same experimental protocol employed by Frassinetti et al [54]. In this study implicit and explicit knowledge about the bodily self was assessed in two separate experiments.…”

“…In both experiments half of the images portrayed the patients' own body parts, while the remaining half portrayed strangers' body parts. Results by Frassinetti et al [54] showed that participants were more accurate in the implicit task with their own rather than with others' body effectors. In contrast, the self-advantage was not found when an explicit recognition of one's own body effectors was required.…”

Jaspers, the Body, and Schizophrenia: The Bodily Self

“…In a previous study from our group [45], we proposed that the bodily self-advantage is the expression of implicit, rather than explicit, and body-specific knowledge, based mainly on the sensorimotor representation of one's own body effectors. Healthy participants were implicitly (i.e.…”

“…Recently, we used the same tasks as in Frassinetti et al [45] with first-episode schizophrenia (FES) patients in order to test whether a specific bodily self-advantage effect is either preserved or lost in these patients [51]. …”

A Sensorimotor Network for the Bodily Self

“…Besides the distinction between exteroceptive, interoceptive, and proprioceptive awareness, what is the basic experience of our body as a bodily self ? What enables us to implicitly distinguish our body from other human bodies (Ferri, Frassinetti, Costantini, & Gallese, 2011;Frassinetti, Ferri, Maini, Benassi, & Gallese, 2011;Frassinetti et al, 2009Frassinetti et al, , 2010Frassinetti, Maini, Romualdi, Galante, & Avanzi, 2008)? Recently, it has been proposed that the bodily self can be conceived as motor in nature (Gallese & Sinigaglia, 2010;Legrand, 2006), that is, based on the experience of our own body parts according to their motor potentialities, as they are represented in a motor bodily format (see Gallese & Sinigaglia, 2011).…”