Full-body ownership illusion elicited by visuo-vestibular integration

Vestibular signals allow us to maintain balance and orient ourselves in space. However, the possible contribution of the vestibular sense to the perception of the body as one's own (body ownership) remains poorly understood. The aim of the present study was to investigate how vestibular information contributes to the experience of body ownership using multisensory integration. We conducted 3 studies using a "full-body ownership illusion" induced by virtual reality technology and galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS); the latter is a technique that allows for the selective stimulation of vestibular afferents. Participants wearing head-mounted displays saw a mannequin's body that was performing a slow swinging movement from a first-person perspective. At the same time, participants were exposed to GVS that elicited vestibular sensations of swinging whole-body movements in the corresponding direction. Perceived ownership of the seen body was measured using questionnaire ratings and skin-conductance responses to a knife threat toward the mannequin. We demonstrated that when participants were exposed to congruent visuo-vestibular information, they perceived a stronger ownership of the mannequin's body compared with when they were exposed to unimodal visual and vestibular conditions or an incongruent visuo-vestibular condition. The findings show that visuo-vestibular congruency is sufficient to increase the feeling of illusory body ownership of a mannequin's body. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).