The sense of body ownership in healthy and pathological populations: from touch to mentalization. - Finanziamento dell’Unione Europea – NextGenerationEU – missione 4, componente 2, investimento 1.1.

Over the last decades, the study of the bodily self-awareness has attracted much attention among neuroscientists, philosophers, and psychologists. However, several aspects that participate in maintaining a coherent sense of the self are still unknown. For instance, evidence shows that elementary components such as tactile perception and the experience of owning a body (i.e., the sense of body ownership – BO) may contribute to the sense of the self, although the way they interact is still unclear. This project, proposed by two research Units led by Annamaria Berti and Gabriella Bottini, aims at investigating this still blurred aspect through a series of experiments on both healthy and brain-damaged individuals. Unit Berti will explore veridical and non-veridical tactile experiences (phantom touch) and how they can affect or be affected by bottom-up and top-down processes related to BO in healthy subjects. They will perform a series of behavioural and neuroimaging studies using virtual reality and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) paradigms. Unit Bottini will investigate the relationship between touch and BO in brain-damaged patients. In particular, Unit Bottini will compare the occurrence of tactile imperception and disturbed sensation of limb ownership (DSO) in a consecutive series of right-brain damaged patients. Furthermore, the possible correlation will also be investigated via a voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping approach by comparing the lesional patterns of the two neuropsychological deficits. Lastly, their interdependence will be tested using a physiological manipulation, i.e., Caloric Vestibular Stimulation (CVS), administered to patients presenting with both tactile imperception and DSO. By studying both neurologically healthy and damaged populations, the intersection between the two research Units' findings will improve the knowledge of how tactile signals impact the knowing and feeling that our body belongs to us and how we experience it as a unitary entity. Our results will also make a substantial applicative contribution by providing valuable information to the clinicians involved in neurorehabilitation by promoting more tailored treatments for the bodily self-disturbances.