Transcending the self in immersive virtual reality
Open accessAbstract
Cognitive neuroscientists have discovered through various experiments that our body representation is surprisingly flexible. Multisensory body illusions work well in immersive virtual reality, and recent findings suggest that they offer both a powerful tool for neuroscience and a new path for future exploration. Because virtual reality is entirely programmed, the form or type of virtual body can be quite different from the participant's actual body, which can impact perception, attitudes, and behavior. A dramatic example of this is when adults inhabiting a virtual child's body overestimate the size of objects and demonstrate implicit attitude and behavioral changes that seem more child-like, but in an adult body the same size as that of a child, they do not exhibit such changes. Here we review the emerging field of body representation and its implications for a new, powerful virtual reality paradigm.
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The IVR setup results in sensorimotor correlations (visual, proprioceptive, tactile and motor) that elicit illusions of ownership and agency over the virtual body.
“This set up results in sensorimotor correlations (visual, proprioceptive, tactile and motor) that elicit illusions of ownership and agency over the virtual body [10,11,54].”
From Changing bodies changes minds: Owning another body affects social cognition (2015) · cites this paper as [54]
When we have an illusion of body ownership over a body different to our own, this can change aspects of our perception, attitudes, behaviours and self-identity.
“Several recent results have pointed towards the likelihood that when we have an illusion of body ownership over a body different to our own this can change aspects of our perception, attitudes, behaviours and self-identity1819.”
From Conversations between self and self as Sigmund Freud—A virtual body ownership paradigm for self counselling (2015) · cites this paper as [19]
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- Authors
- Slater, M., & Sanchez-Vives, M. V.
- Affiliations
- Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ES)
- Venue
- Computer
- Published
- 2014-07
- Volume
- 47
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 24-30
- ISSN
- 0018-9162 (ISSN-L)
- 1558-0814
- OpenAlex
- W1993698727
- Cited by
- 134
- References
- 20
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 19 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 12.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- Locations
- Computer (publishedVersion)
- Dipòsit Digital de la Universitat de Barcelona (Universitat de Barcelona) (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- RECERCAT (Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya) (submittedVersion, public-domain)
- Funders
- European Commission
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Keywords
- immersive virtual reality, representation of the body, virtual body, body size perception, implicit attitudes, behavior change, self-perception
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