A Multisensory Perspective on the Role of the Amygdala in Body Ownership

Abstract

A sense of ownership over one's own body is essential for effective interaction with the world: acting upon objects or communicating with others relies on distinguishing between the parts of the world that constitute our self, and the parts of the world that do not. The sense of body ownership is frequently associated with activity in the ventral premotor cortex, intraparietal sulcus, and insula (Grivaz et al., 2017), and is believed to stem from multisensory integration (Ehrsson, 2012): congruent sensory signals are combined to provide a feeling of bodily self that is distinct from the surrounding environment. This is emphasized by the rubber hand illusion (RHI), in which synchronous, but not asynchronous, stroking of a rubber hand and the real hand (which is hidden from view) can induce a sense of ownership over the false limb (Botvinick and Cohen, 1998).