Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan.
Department of Information and Management Systems Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology, Niigata, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2022 Oct 26;12(1):18002. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-22927-1.
Human body awareness is adaptive to context changes. The illusory sense of body ownership has been studied since the publication of the rubber hand illusion, where ambiguous body ownership feeling was first defined. Phenomenologically, the ambiguous body ownership is attributed to a conflict between feeling and judgement: it characterises a discrepancy between first- and third-person processes. Although Bayesian inference can explain this malleability of body image, it still fails to relate the subjective feeling to physiological data. This study attempts to explain subjective experience during rubber hand illusions by using integrated information theory (IIT). The integrated information [Formula: see text] in IIT measures the difference between the whole system and its subsystems. By analysing seven different time-series of physiological data representing a small body-brain system, we demonstrate that the integrity of the whole system during the illusion decreases, while the integrity of its subsystems increases. These general tendencies agree with many brain-image analyses and subjective reports; furthermore, we found that subjective ratings as ambiguous body ownership were associated with [Formula: see text]. Our result suggests that IIT can explain the general tendency of the sense of ownership illusions and individual differences in subjective experience during the illusions.
人体意识具有适应环境变化的能力。自从橡胶手错觉发表以来，人们一直在研究虚幻的身体所有权感，其中首次定义了模棱两可的身体所有权感。从现象学上看，这种模棱两可的身体所有权感归因于感觉和判断之间的冲突：它是第一人称和第三人称过程之间差异的特征。虽然贝叶斯推理可以解释身体图像的这种可塑造性，但它仍然无法将主观感觉与生理数据联系起来。本研究试图通过使用综合信息理论（IIT）来解释橡胶手错觉期间的主观体验。IIT 中的综合信息[公式：见文本]衡量整个系统与其子系统之间的差异。通过分析代表小身体-大脑系统的七个不同的生理数据时间序列，我们证明了在错觉期间整个系统的完整性降低，而其子系统的完整性增加。这些总体趋势与许多脑图像分析和主观报告一致；此外，我们发现主观评分与[公式：见文本]有关。我们的结果表明，IIT 可以解释所有权错觉的总体趋势以及错觉期间主观体验的个体差异。
