article

The sense of embodiment in virtual reality

Authors:

Konstantina Kilteni,

Raphaela Groten,

Mel SlaterAuthors Info & Claims

Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, Volume 21, Issue 4

Pages 373 - 387

https://doi.org/10.1162/PRES_a_00124

Published: 01 December 2012 Publication History

Abstract

What does it feel like to own, to control, and to be inside a body? The multidimensional nature of this experience together with the continuous presence of one's biological body, render both theoretical and experimental approaches problematic. Nevertheless, exploitation of immersive virtual reality has allowed a reframing of this question to whether it is possible to experience the same sensations towards a virtual body inside an immersive virtual environment as toward the biological body, and if so, to what extent. The current paper addresses these issues by referring to the Sense of Embodiment (SoE). Due to the conceptual confusion around this sense, we provide a working definition which states that SoE consists of three subcomponents: the sense of self-location, the sense of agency, and the sense of body ownership. Under this proposed structure, measures and experimental manipulations reported in the literature are reviewed and related challenges are outlined. Finally, future experimental studies are proposed to overcome those challenges, toward deepening the concept of SoE and enhancing it in virtual applications.

References

[1]

Armel, K. C., & Ramachandran, V. S. (2003). Projecting sensations to external objects: Evidence from skin conductance response. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 270(1523), 1499-1506.

[2]

Arzy, S., Thut, G., Mohr, C., Michel, C. M., & Blanke, O. (2006). Neural basis of embodiment: Distinct contributions of temporoparietal junction and extrastriate body area. Journal of Neuroscience, 26(31), 8074-8081.

[3]

Aspell, J. E., Lenggenhager, B., & Blanke, O. (2009). Keeping in touch with one's self: Multisensory mechanisms of self-consciousness. PLoS One, 4(8), e6488.

[4]

Berlucchi, G., & Aglioti, S. (1997). The body in the brain: Neural bases of corporeal awareness. Trends in Neurosciences, 20(12), 560-564.

[5]

Biocca, F. (1997). The Cyborg's Dilemma: Embodiment in virtual environments. Presented at the 2nd International Conference on Cognitive Technology, 1997.

[6]

Blakemore, S. J., Wolpert, D. M., & Frith, C. D. (2002). Abnormalities in the awareness of action. Trends in Cognitive Science, 6(6), 237-242.

[7]

Blanke, O., Landis, T., Spinelli, L., &: Seeck, M. (2004). Out-of-body experience and autoscopy of neurological origin. Brain, 127(Pt 2), 243- 258.

[8]

Blanke, O., & Metzinger, T. (2009). Full-body illusions and minimal phenomenal selfhood. Trends in Cognitive Science, 13(1), 7-13.

[9]

Bohil, C. J., Alicea, B., & Biocca, F. A. (2011). Virtual reality in neuroscience research and therapy. Nature Revie1vs Neuroscience.

[10]

Botvinick, M., & Cohen, J. (1998). Rubber hands "feel" touch that eyes see. Nature, 391(6669), 756.

[11]

Costantini, M., & Haggard, P. (2007). The rubber hand illusion: Sensitivity and reference frame for body ownership. Consciousness and Cognition, 16(2), 229-240.

[12]

David, N., Bewernick, B. H., Cohen., M. X., Newen, A., Lux, S., Fink, G. R., & Vogeley, K. (2006). Neural representations of self versus other: Visual-spatial perspective taking and agency in a virtual ball-tossing game. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18(6), 898-910.

Digital Library

[13]

David, N., Newen, A., & Vogeley, K. (2008). The "sense of agency" and its underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms. Consciousness and Cognition, 17(2), 523-534.

[14]

De Preester, H., & Tsakiris, M. (2009). Body-extension versus body-incorporation: Is there a need for a body-model? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8(3), 307-319.

[15]

de Vignemont, F. (2011). Embodiment, ownership and disownership. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(1), 82-93.

[16]

Dummer, T., Picot-Annand, A., Neal, T., & Moore, C. (2009). Movement and the rubber hand illusion. Perception, 38(2), 271-280.

[17]

Ehrsson, H. H. (2007). The experimental induction of out-of-body experiences. Science, 317(5841), 1048.

[18]

Ehrsson, H. H., Spence, C., & Passingham, R. E. (2004). That's my hand! Activity in premotor cortex reflects feeling of ownership of a limb. Science, 305(5685), 875-877.

[19]

Ehrsson, H. H., Wiech, K., Weiskopf, N., Dolan, R. J., & Passingham, R. E. (2007). Threatening a rubber hand that you feel is yours elicits a cortical anxiety response. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, 104(23), 9828-9833.

[20]

Foster, M. E. (2007). Enhancing human-computer interaction with embodied conversational agents. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction: Ambient Interaction, 828-837.

[21]

Franck, N., Farrer, C., Georgieff, N., Marie-Cardine, M., Dalery, J., d'Amato, T., & Jeannerod, M. (2001). Defective recognition of one's own actions in patients with schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 158(3), 454-459.

[22]

Gallagher, S. (2000). Philosophical conceptions of the self: Implications for cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Science, 4(1), 14-21. [pii].

[23]

Giummarra, M. J., Gibson, S. J., Georgiou-Karistianis, N., & Bradshaw, J. L. (2008). Mechanisms underlying embodiment, disembodiment and loss of embodiment. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 32(1), 143-160.

[24]

Graziano, M. S. A., & Botvinick, M. M. (2002). How the brain represents the body: Insights from neurophysiology and psychology. In W. Prinz and B. Hommel (Eds.), Common mechanisms in perception and action: Attention and performance, XIX (pp. 136-157). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

[25]

Halligan, P. W., Fink, G. R., Marshall, J. C., & Vallar, G. (2003). Spatial cognition: Evidence from visual neglect. Trends in Cognitive Science, 7(3), 125-133.

[26]

Hohwy, J., & Paton, B. (2010). Explaining away the body: Experiences of supernaturally caused touch and touch on non-hand objects within the rubber hand illusion. PLoS One, 5(2), e9416.

[27]

Holz, T., Dragone, M., & O'Hare, G. M.P. (2009). Where robots and virtual agents meet. International Journal of Social Robotics, 1(1), 83-93.

[28]

Honma, M., Koyama, S., & Osada, Y. (2009). Double tactile sensations evoked by a single visual stimulus on a rubber hand. Neuroscience Research, 65(3), 307-311.

[29]

IJsselsteijn, W. A., de Kort, Y. A. W., & Haans, A. (2006). Is this my hand I see before me? The rubber hand illusion in reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 15(4), 455-464.

Digital Library

[30]

Kalckert, A., & Ehrsson, H. H. (2012). Moving a rubber hand that feels like your own: Dissociation of ownership and agency. [Original Research]. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6.

[31]

Kammers, M.P., Verhagen, L., Dijkerman, H. C., Hogendoorn, H., De Vignemont, F., & Schutter, D. J. (2009). Is this hand for real? Attenuation of the rubber hand illusion by transcranial magnetic stimulation over the inferior parietal lobule. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21(7), 1311- 1320.

Digital Library

[32]

Kanayama, N., Sato, A., & Ohira, H. (2009). The role of gamma band oscillations and synchrony on rubber hand illusion and crossmodal integration. Brain and Cognition, 69(1), 19-29.

[33]

Lee, K. M. (2004). Presence, explicated. Communication Theory, 14(1), 27-50.

[34]

Lenggenhager, B., Mouthon, M., & Blanke, O. (2009). Spatial aspects of bodily self-consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition, 18(1), 110-117.

[35]

Lenggenhager, B., Smith, S. T., & Blanke, O. (2006). Femetional and neural mechanisms of embodiment: Importance of the vestibular system and the temporal parietal junction. Reviews in the Neurosciences, 17(6), 643-657.

[36]

Lenggenhager, B., Tadi, T., Metzinger, T., & Blanke, O. (2007). Video ergo sum: Manipulating bodily self-consciousness. Science, 317(5841), 1096-1099.

[37]

Longo, M. R., Schuur, F., Kammers, M.P., Tsakiris, M., & Haggard, P. (2008). What is embodiment? A psychometric approach. Cognition, 107(3), 978-998.

[38]

Longo, M. R., Schuur, F., Kammers, M.P., Tsakiris, M., & Haggard, P. (2009). Self awareness and the body image. Acta Psychologica Amsterdam, 132(2), 166-172.

[39]

Lopez, C., Halje, P., & Blanke, O. (2008). Body ownership and embodiment: Vestibular and multisensory mechanisms. Clinical Neurophysiology, 38(3), 149-161.

[40]

Meehan, M., Insko, B., Whitton, M., & Brooks, F. P., Jr. (2002). Physiological measures of presence in stressful virtual environments. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 21(3), 645-652.

Digital Library

[41]

Metzinger, T. (2008). Empirical perspectives trom the self-model theory of subjectivity: A brief summary with examples. Progress in Brain Research, 168, 215-245.

[42]

Metzinger, T. (2009). Why are out-of-body experiences interesting for philosophers? The theoretical relevance of OBE research. Cortex, 45(2), 256-258.

[43]

Moseley, G. L., Olthof, N., Venema, A., Don, S., Wijers, M., Gallace, A., & Spence, C. (2008). Psychologically induced cooling of a specific body part caused by the illusory ownership of an artificial counterpart. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA, 105(35), 13169-13173.

[44]

Newport, R., Pearce, R., & Preston, C. (2010). Fake hands in action: Embodiment and control of supernumerary limbs. Experimental Brain Research, 204(3), 385-395.

[45]

Nielsen, T. I. (1963). Volition: A new experimental approach. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 4(1), 225-230.

[46]

Normand, J. M., Giannopoulos, E., Spanlang, B., & Slater, M. (2011). Multisensory stimulation can induce an illusion of larger belly size in immersive virtual reality. PLoS One, 6(1), e16128.

[47]

Peled, A., Pressman, A., Geva, A. B., & Modai, I. (2003). Somatosensory evoked potentials during a rubber-hand illusion in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 64(2-3), 157- 163.

[48]

Petkova, V.I., & Ehrsson, H. H. (2008). If I were you: Perceptual illusion of body swapping. PLoS One, 3(12), e3832.

[49]

Petkova, V.I., Khoshnevis, M., & Ehrsson, H. H. (2011). The perspective matters! Multisensory integration in egocentric reference frames determines full-body ownership. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 35.

[50]

Press, C., Heyes, C., Haggard, P., & Eimer, M. (2008). Visuotactile learning and body representation: An ERP study with rubber hands and rubber objects. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(2), 312-323.

Digital Library

[51]

Ratan, R. A., & Hasler, B. (2009). Self-presence standardized: Introducing the Self-Presence Questionnaire (SPQ). Paper presented at the 10th Annual International Workshop on Presence, Los Angeles, USA.

[52]

Rohde, M., Di Luca, M., & Ernst, M. O. (2011). The rubber hand illusion: Feeling of ownership and proprioceptive drift do not go hand in hand. PLoS One, 6(6), e21659.

[53]

Sanchez-Vives, M. V., Spanlang, B., Frisoli, A., Bergamasco, M., & Slater, M. (2010). Virtual hand illusion induced by visuomotor correlations. PLoS One, 5(4), e10381.

[54]

Sato, A., & Yasuda, A. (2005). Illusion of sense of self-agency: Discrepancy between the predicted and actual sensory consequences of actions modulates the sense of self-agency, but not the sense of self-ownership. Cognition, 94(3), 241-255.

[55]

Schutz-Bosbach, S., Mancini, B., Aglioti, S.M., & Haggard, P. (2006). Self and other in the human motor system. Currents in Biology, 16(18), 1830-1834.

[56]

Shimada, S., Fukuda, K., & Hiraki, K. (2009). Rubber hand illusion under delayed visual feedback. PLoS One, 4(7), e6185.

[57]

Slater, M. (2009). Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1535), 3549-3557.

[58]

Slater, M., Perez-Marcos, D., Ehrsson, H. H., & Sanchez-Vives, M. V. (2008). Towards a digital body: The virtual arm illusion. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2, 6.

[59]

Slater, M., Perez-Marcos, D., Ehrsson, H. H., & Sanchez-Vives, M. V. (2009). Inducing illusory ownership of a virtual body. Frontiers Neuroscience, 3(2), 214-220.

[60]

Slater, M., Spanlang, B., & Corominas, D. (2010). Simulating virtual environments within virtual environments as the basis for a psychophysics of presence. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 29(4), 92.

Digital Library

[61]

Slater, M., Spanlang, B., Sanchez-Vives, M. V., & Blanke, O. (2010). First person experience of body transfer in virtual reality. PLoS One, 5(5), e10564.

[62]

Tsakiris, M. (2008). Looking for myself: Current multisensory input alters self-face recognition. PLoS One, 3(12), e4040.

[63]

Tsakiris, M. (2010). My body in the brain: A neurocognitive model of body-ownership. Neuropsychologia, 48(3), 703- 712.

[64]

Tsakiris, M., Carpenter, L., James, D., & Fotopoulou, A. (2010). Hands only illusion: Multisensory integration elicits sense of ownership for body parts but not for noncorporeal objects. Experimental Brain Research, 204(3), 343-352.

[65]

Tsakiris, M., Costantini, M., & Haggard, P. (2008). The role of the right temporo-parietal junction in maintaining a coherent sense of one's body. Neuropsychologia, 46(12), 3014-3018.

[66]

Tsakiris, M., & Haggard, P. (2005). The rubber hand illusion revisited: Visuotactile integration and self-attribution. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31(1), 80-91.

[67]

Tsakiris, M., Prabhu, G., & Haggard, P. (2006). Having a body versus moving your body: How agency structures body-ownership. Consciousness and Cognition, 15(2), 423- 432.

[68]

Tsakiris, M., Schutz-Bosbach, S., & Gallagher, S. (2007). On agency and body-ownership: Phenomenological and neurocognitive reflections. Consciousness and Cognition, 16(3), 645-660.

[69]

Vaishnavi, S., Calhoun, J., & Chatterjee, A. (2001). Binding personal and peripersonal space: Evidence from tactile extinction. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13(2), 181- 189.

Digital Library

[70]

Vallar, G., & Ronchi, R. (2009). Somatoparaphrenia: A body delusion. A review of the neuropsychological literature. Experimental Brain Research, 192(3), 533-551.

[71]

van den Bos, E., & Jeannerod, M. (2002). Sense of body and sense of action both contribute to self-recognition. Cognition, 85(2), 177-187.

[72]

Wainer, J., Feil-Seifer, D. J., Shell, D. A., & Mataric, M. J. (2006). The role of physical embodiment in human-robot interaction. Paper presented at the 15th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (ROMAN), 2006.

[73]

Yuan, Y., & Steed, A. (2010). Is the rubber hand illusion induced by immersive virtual reality? Paper presented at the 2010 IEEE Virtual Reality Conference (VR).

Cited By

Rosenbaum ARinott M(2024)The Avatar Dressing Room - a VR environment for strengthening physical and psychological embodiment with avatarsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction10.1145/3677386.3688895(1-3)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677386.3688895
Takita HKodama DHatada YNarumi THirose M(2024)Motor Skill Learning by Virtual Co-embodiment with an AI Teacher Trained in Human Teaching BehaviorACM Symposium on Applied Perception 202410.1145/3675231.3675237(1-9)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3675231.3675237
Um JJeon EKang YKang SElsharkawy ADelPreto JMatusik WRus DKim SKostakos VKay JHoang T(2024)LegSense: Inducing Walking Sensation in Seated VR by Providing Movement Illusion via Electrical Muscle StimulationCompanion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing10.1145/3675094.3678375(797-802)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3675094.3678375
Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Narrative Perspectives and Embodiment in Cinematic Virtual Reality
Extended Reality
Abstract
Along with the technological advancements of virtual reality over the years, has come the emergence of Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR), where immersive 360-degree video approaches the high-quality found in feature film. Extensive research has been ...
Virtual Fieldwork: Designing Augmented Reality Applications Using Virtual Reality Worlds
Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality
Abstract
AR technology continues to develop and is expected to be used in a much wider range of fields. However, existing head-mounted displays for AR are still inadequate for use in daily life. Therefore, we focused on using VR to develop AR services and ...
Virtual Environment Assessment for Tasks Based on Sense of Embodiment
HCI International 2020 – Late Breaking Papers: Virtual and Augmented Reality
Abstract
The quality of a virtual environment for a specified task based on the concept of sense of embodiment (SoE) was assessed in this study. The quality of virtual reality (VR) is evaluated based on the VR system or apparatus’s performance; however, we ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments

Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments Volume 21, Issue 4

December 2012

31 pages

ISSN:1054-7460

Editors:
Maria V. Sanchez-Vives
ICREA-IDIBAPS, Barcelona, Spain
,
Matthias Harders
ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Issue’s Table of Contents

Publisher

MIT Press

Cambridge, MA, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 December 2012

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

297
Total Citations
View Citations
0
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 19 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Rosenbaum ARinott M(2024)The Avatar Dressing Room - a VR environment for strengthening physical and psychological embodiment with avatarsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction10.1145/3677386.3688895(1-3)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677386.3688895
Takita HKodama DHatada YNarumi THirose M(2024)Motor Skill Learning by Virtual Co-embodiment with an AI Teacher Trained in Human Teaching BehaviorACM Symposium on Applied Perception 202410.1145/3675231.3675237(1-9)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3675231.3675237
Um JJeon EKang YKang SElsharkawy ADelPreto JMatusik WRus DKim SKostakos VKay JHoang T(2024)LegSense: Inducing Walking Sensation in Seated VR by Providing Movement Illusion via Electrical Muscle StimulationCompanion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing10.1145/3675094.3678375(797-802)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3675094.3678375
Gründling JWeyers B(2024)Immersive Analytics: The Influence of Flow, Sense of Agency, and Presence on Performance and SatisfactionProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36611448:EICS(1-27)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661144
Teo TSakurada KSugimoto MLee GBillinghurst M(2024)Evaluations of Parallel Views for Sequential VR Search TasksProceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference 202410.1145/3652920.3652928(148-156)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652920.3652928
Herforth JBotev J(2024)A3CplusProceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Immersive Mixed and Virtual Environment Systems10.1145/3652212.3652215(8-14)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652212.3652215
Mokhtar NEsteves A(2024)Hand Me This: Exploring the Effects of Gaze-driven Animations and Hand Representations in Users’ Sense of Presence and EmbodimentProceedings of the 2024 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications10.1145/3649902.3656362(1-7)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649902.3656362
Lebrun FHaliyo SAuvray MGueorguiev DBailly G(2024)Study of the Impact of Visual and Haptic Sensory Sensitivities on the Detection of Visuo-Haptic Illusions in Virtual RealityProceedings of the 35th Conference on l'Interaction Humain-Machine10.1145/3649792.3649803(1-15)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649792.3649803
Chatain JGashaj VMuttappillil BSumner RKapur M(2024)Designing for Embodied Sense-making of Mathematics: Perspectives on Directed and Spontaneous Bodily ActionsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661571(3318-3335)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661571
Gloumeau PPettifer S(2024)Exploring Visual Conditions in Virtual Reality for the Teleoperation of RobotsProceedings of the 30th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology10.1145/3641825.3687750(1-10)Online publication date: 9-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641825.3687750
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents