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doctoral thesis

The Self Out of Body: Visuo-Vestibular Mechanisms of Bodily Self-Consciousness

Wu, Hsin-Ping  
2025

Bodily self-consciousness (BSC), the most basic, pre-reflective form of conscious experience of self that is grounded in a body, is characterized by self-identification, self-location and first-person perspective (1PP) and relies on multisensory integration of bodily signals, including visual, somatosensory, proprioceptive and vestibular inputs. BSC can be altered in neurological conditions, with out-of-body experiences (OBEs) as the most striking example. While clinical and experimental work implicate vestibular processing in such alterations, no prior research has systematically manipulated natural vestibular input to induce OBE-like states. The present thesis addresses this gap using a custom-built motion platform integrated into a tailored immersive mixed reality setup. In the first half of the thesis, we developed and validated paradigms to manipulate visuo-vestibular congruency during virtual reality-based OBE episodes with passive whole-body motion. Directionally congruent self-motion cues were most effective in inducing an OBE-like illusion characterized by elevated self-location, stronger disembodiment feeling and altered vestibular sensations. Applying this paradigm in Study 2, we showed that peripersonal space (PPS) measures can implicitly index changes in self-orientation relative to both physical and virtual gravity. Under congruent visuo-vestibular stimulation, back-PPS enlarged to resemble that of a prone body orientation, despite participants' actual supine position. This effect was observed selectively in visually reliant participants. The second half of the thesis focuses on heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEPs) as a promising neural marker of the bodily self. Study 3 demonstrated that natural vestibular self-motion inputs altered heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEPs) in a velocity- and direction-specific manner. Study 4 combined visuo-vestibular stimulation with guided meditation to jointly manipulate cognitive and bodily self-consciousness. Collectively, these studies demonstrate that visuo-vestibular stimulation shapes spatial dimensions of the bodily self, offering novel paradigms and measures that yield new insights for experimental induction and quantification of altered BSC.

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