Sensing the body, representing the body: Evidence from a neurologically based delusion of body ownership
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Updated: Mar 19, 2026

Virtual Hand with Ambiguous Movement between the Self and Other Origin: Sense of Ownership and 'Other-Produced' Agency
Published on: October 28, 2020
Lorenzo Pia1,2, Francesca Garbarini1, Carlotta Fossataro1
1a SAMBA (SpAtial, Motor & Bodily Awareness) Research Group, Psychology Department , University of Turin , Turin , Italy.
Abstract:
Humans experience their own body as unitary and monolithic in nature. However, recent findings in cognitive neuroscience seem to suggest that body awareness has a complex and multifaceted structure that can be dissociated in several subcomponents, possibly underpinned by different brain circuits. In the present paper, we focus on a recently reported neuropsychological disorder of body ownership in which patients misattribute to themselves someone else's arm and its movements. As first, we briefly review the clinical and functional features of this disorder. Secondly, we attempt to explain the nature of the delusion and to gain new hints regarding the mechanisms subserving the construction and the maintenance of the sense of body ownership in the intact brain functioning.
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