When passive feels active - delusion-proneness alters self-recognition in the moving rubber hand illusion

Kalckert, A., Louzolo, A. and Petrovic, P. (2015) When passive feels active - delusion-proneness alters self-recognition in the moving rubber hand illusion. PLoS ONE, 10 (6). e0128549. ISSN 1932-6203 doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0128549

Abstract/Summary

Psychotic patients have problems with bodily self-recognition such as the experience of self-produced actions (sense of agency) and the perception of the body as their own (sense of ownership). While it has been shown that such impairments in psychotic patients can be explained by hypersalient processing of external sensory input it has also been suggested that they lack normal efference copy in voluntary action. However, it is not known how problems with motor predictions like efference copy contribute to impaired sense of agency and ownership in psychosis or psychosis-related states. We used a rubber hand illusion based on finger movements and measured sense of agency and ownership to compute a bodily self-recognition score in delusion-proneness (indexed by Peters’ Delusion Inventory - PDI). A group of healthy subjects (n=71) experienced active movements (involving motor predictions) or passive movements (lacking motor predictions). We observed a highly significant correlation between delusion-proneness and self-recognition in the passive conditions, while no such effect was observed in the active conditions. This was seen for both ownership and agency scores. The result suggests that delusion-proneness is associated with hypersalient external input in passive conditions, resulting in an abnormal experience of the illusion. We hypothesize that this effect is not present in the active condition because deficient motor predictions counteract hypersalience in psychosis proneness.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/69612
Identification Number/DOI	10.1371/journal.pone.0128549
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	University of Reading Malaysia
Publisher	Public Library of Science
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item