Body Ownership: Is That Really Your Hand Moving?
September 2, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Body ownership is the feeling that your body belongs to you and is there constantly; vision, and other sensory signals, contribute to it. A sense of body ownership is often disrupted, the September 2nd Science Daily notes, in “a range of different neurological, psychiatric and psychological conditions, such as after a stroke, in autism, epilepsy, anorexia, and bulimia.” Body awareness and body ownership are two things that, I suspect Charlie has not always had, or had in the way that a “typical” child might. We had to teach him to put his hands in front of him to catch his fall and I’ve wondered if, when Charlie (as he rarely does now) bangs his head, he’s sometimes trying to remind himself that it is his own head.
An experiment involving a rubber hand has been used to explain body ownership; from the Wellcome Trust:
In the ‘rubber hand illusion’, someone can be made to believe that a fake hand being rubbed in front of them is their own, if their own (hidden) hand is rubbed at the same time.
The trick is associated with activity in several areas in the brain, particularly the ventral premotor cortex. The significance of this activity is unclear, however – the phenomenon could mainly be due to the powerful effects of the visual system.
Researchers from Oxford University have also found that a physical response occurs as well as one in the mind, today’s Science Daily notes. Participants actually feel like they “own” the rubber hand and incorporate it in their sense of self and “disown” their own hand, as measured by a drop in temperature to their own hand:
People suffering from complex regional pain syndrome can experience significant distortion in their sense of their physical self. They can disown a limb, feeling that it does not belong to them or that a limb is bigger than it really is.
Many conditions characterised by distortions of body image or ownership are also characterised by a disruption of temperature in one side of the body or a single limb.
‘We wanted to see if we could replicate any of this experience. We wanted to see if we could manipulate our sense of ownership of our bodies and reproduce a temperature disruption,’ says Dr [G Lorimer] Moseley [of the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford]. ‘That is exactly what we saw.’
Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay has also written about his mind and body being disconnected; he gives an examples of seeing a fan and knowing that it would hurt if he touched the moving blades, and his hand still touching them. And the title of his most recent book is indeed, How Can I Talk If My Lips Don’t Move? Inside My Autistic Mind.
thanks for this post…you have a gift for finding relevant links that a lot of other people would overlook. by far, this is something that has impacted me the most: lack of self-image. i forget what i look like throughout the day, struggle to form a sense of image. my body sense is painfully disconnected…ambiguous, amorphous.
what i have been wondering this past year, as i have thought about it more: how much of this difficulty is related to another asperger’s issue: mind-blindness. i am unable to think from another persons perspective…have to watch others, observe their body language and make educated guesses about their thoughts, intentions (which i see a lot of in asperger’s literature: people having to think analytically through a social interaction).
so the point: i wonder if being unable to think from another persons perspective can prevent one from forming a self-image, or at least make it more difficult. compared to others, i’m probably receiving little sense of how people react to me (due to the mind-blindness), making a consistent sense of self difficult. every person i meet…every individual reaction…gives a different set of data about who they see, who i am.
er. this is difficult to articulate.
i don’t know. it’s difficult to sort identity issues out from the sensory issues. it’s possible one’s body can feel disconnected due to the bombardment of lights, sounds, etc…but i’ve thought about this a lot: the relationship between mind-blindess and sense of self; the way others sense of who we are creates a sort of foothold in the world…an identity (mom or dad, teacher, friend, neighbor), a little bit of peace.
I’ve read and heard conjecture that flapping of the hands is because the autist does not know where his hands are in space. I’m skeptical about this as my daughter flaps, but also can unerringly pick up anything she desires.
The postulation is that a swollen cerebellum results in this inability. It is also being suggested that Facilitated Communications will overcome this.
I’m not sure how easily it would be to flap something you cannot feel. The kids challenge of
crossing your hands at the wrist, placing your palms together, interlacing your fingers and resting them on the opposite hand, then rotating your wrist so the knuckles point more or less skyward, and finally trying to move individual digits without touching them, while looking at them, should demonstrate this.
I think at one time, and for a long time she did not relate her reflection to herself. She definitely does now. I’m still not sure when shown a picture of the “Cat in the Hat” she knows where the cat stops and the hat starts. She also might not have been self-aware, but I think she always knew where all she stopped and the world started.
This whole line of research seems really to have potential to help us understand EVERYONE better – fascinating stuff.
Thanks for posting it!
@mayfly, Charlie was 5 when I realized that he knew it was himself reflected in the mirror. He had lost a tooth and spent several minutes staring at the gap in his mouth. I am not sure about him knowing where—to use the Cat in the Hat example—the cat stops and the hat starts; he generally has a lot of trouble identifying things in a drawing, and in 2-D more generally.
@Laura, I’d like to see the rubber hand experiment in action—it sounds improbably but it helps me make sense of some things.
@M, thank you for giving me a lot to think about—especially your point about “[forgetting] what [you] look like throughout the day”…….
one thing I have noticed about Charlie as regards him defining himself in relation to other things and people in space: he tends to stand “too close” to people when he walks by them, or to ride his bike so close to cars and their rear view mirrors that he looks like he’s in danger of hitting them. he doesn’t and I’ve wondered if he gets “that close” as a way of defining where he is in space (if that makes sense)?
I think Miss Baggs has written on this subject, too. From personal experience.
“I think Miss Baggs has written on this subject”
Can this be found in a blog? A book? I would be interesting in reading her experiences.
Umm, that would be Miss Amanda Baggs, of California and Vermont, who keeps a blog called Ballastexistenz, one of those listed at the Autism Hub.
excellent! thank you.
Chapters 3-6, among others, of Oliver Sacks’ book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and Other Clinical Tales, has some detailed descriptions of sensory or proprioception distortions and peripheral sensory neuropathies.
The Disembodied Lady, The Man Who Fell Out of Bed, Hands, and Phantoms.