title: Allocentric and egocentric manipulations of the sense of self-location in full-body illusions and their relation with the sense of body ownership.
abstract: Self-location refers to the experience of occupying a given position in the environment. Recent research has addressed the sense of self-location as one of the key components of self-consciousness, together with the experience of owning the physical body (ownership) (Blanke and Metzinger, Trends Cogn Sci 13:7-13 in 2009. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2008.10.003 ). Experimentally controlled full-body illusions proved to be valuable research tools to study these components and their interaction, and to explore their underlying neural underpinning. The focus of this manuscript is to provide a close look into the nuances of different illusory experiences affecting the sense of self-location and to examine their relation to the concurrent experienced sense of body ownership. On the basis of previous reviewed studies, it is proposed that the sense of self-location may be regarded as the blending of two paralllel representations: the abstract allocentric coding of the position occupied in the environment, mainly associated with visual-perspective, and the egocentric mapping of somatosensory sensations into the external space, mainly associated with peripersonal space. Open questions to be addressed by future research are further addressed.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Neuromotor Physiology, Santa Lucia Foundation, Via Ardeatina 306, 00179, Roma, Italy, a.maselli@h.santalucia.it.
authors.forename: Antonella
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Maselli
mesh_terms: D001828:Body Image; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007088:Illusions / Q000502:physiology*; D012649:Self Concept; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*