Lenggenhager, BignaTadi, TejMetzinger, ThomasBlanke, Olaf2010-11-162010-11-162010-11-16200710.1126/science.1143439https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/57536WOS:000248946700049Humans normally experience the conscious self as localized within their bodily borders. This spatial unity may break down in certain neurological conditions such as out-of-body experiences, leading to a striking disturbance of bodily self-consciousness. On the basis of these clinical data, we designed an experiment that uses conflicting visual-somatosensory input in virtual reality to disrupt the spatial unity between the self and the body. We found that during multisensory conflict, participants felt as if a virtual body seen in front of them was their own body and mislocalized themselves toward the virtual body, to a position outside their bodily borders. Our results indicate that spatial unity and bodily self-consciousness can be studied experimentally and are based on multisensory and cognitive processing of bodily information.Body Imagetext::journal::journal article::research article