title: Motor simulation and the bodily self.
abstract: Previous studies demonstrated the human ability to implicitly recognize their own body. When submitted to a visual matching task, participants showed the so-called self-advantage, that is, a better performance with self rather than others' body or body parts. Here, we investigated whether the body self-advantage relies upon a motor representation of one's body. Participants were submitted to a laterality judgment of self and others' hands (Experiment 1 and 3), which involves a sensory-motor mental simulation. Moreover, to investigate whether the self-advantage emerges also when an explicit self processing is required, the same participants were submitted to an explicit self-body recognition task (Experiment 2). Participants showed the self-advantage when performing the laterality judgment, but not when self-recognition was explicitly required. Thus, implicit and explicit recognition of the bodily self dissociate and only an implicit recognition of the bodily self, mapped in motor terms, allows the self-advantage to emerge.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Parma, Parma, Italy. francesca.ferri@nemo.unipr.it
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ferri
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Frassinetti
authors.forename: Marcello
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Costantini
authors.forename: Vittorio
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Gallese
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001828:Body Image; D005260:Female; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D010812:Physical Stimulation; D012649:Self Concept; D055815:Young Adult