Girondini Matteo, Mariano Marika, Stanco Giulia, Gallace Alberto, Zapparoli Laura
Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
Mind and Behavior Technological Center, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2025 Aug 7;19:1553574. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1553574. eCollection 2025.
Virtual reality (VR) offers novel tools for investigating the sense of agency (SoA) and sense of body ownership (SoO), key components of bodily self-consciousness, by enabling experimental manipulations beyond traditional paradigms. This review systematically examines how these manipulations affect SoA and SoO, focusing on their implicit indexes (e.g., intentional binding, proprioceptive drift) and their alignment with explicit measures.
We clustered the manipulations based on their targeted mechanisms and evaluated their effects on SoA and SoO. Agency manipulations altered the relationship between real and virtual actions, in terms of visuomotor congruence (e.g., temporal or spatial misalignment between actions and outcomes) and movement control (e.g., replacing user actions with pre-recorded movements). Ownership manipulations focused on altering characteristics of the virtual body or limb, including physical congruence (e.g., realistic vs. object-like representations), spatial congruence (e.g., alignment of virtual and real body positions), and stimulation congruence (e.g., synchronous vs. asynchronous visuotactile feedback).
Agency manipulations had a strong effect on implicit SoA, while only visuomotor congruence produced a mild effect on implicit SoO. Ownership manipulations influenced implicit SoO to different extents: spatial congruence and stimulation congruence exerted moderate effects, while physical congruence showed mild effects. None of these manipulations affected implicit SoA. The alignment between implicit and explicit measures was heterogeneous, indicating that these indexes may capture distinct underlying processes. We observed that agency manipulations showed limited agreement across both SoA and SoO indexes, while ownership manipulations exhibited high agreement on SoA indexes and moderate agreement on SoO indexes.
These findings demonstrate that SoA and SoO can be functionally dissociated through targeted VR manipulations-for example, changes in body appearance did not affect implicit agency. However, SoA and SoO also show context-dependent interactions, as seen with visuomotor congruence manipulations influencing implicit SoO. This highlights their partial independence and dynamic interplay within embodied self-representation. Overall, virtual reality offers a valuable tool for exploring SoA and SoO through paradigms that overcome the limits of the traditional laboratory context. Crucially, our review identifies which types of manipulations tend to selectively influence one experience versus those that affect both, providing a framework for designing more targeted and theory-driven future studies.
虚拟现实（VR）提供了新颖的工具，通过实现超越传统范式的实验操作，来研究能动性意识（SoA）和身体所有权意识（SoO），这两者是身体自我意识的关键组成部分。本综述系统地研究了这些操作如何影响SoA和SoO，重点关注它们的内隐指标（如意图绑定、本体感觉漂移）以及它们与外显测量的一致性。
我们根据操作的目标机制对其进行聚类，并评估它们对SoA和SoO的影响。能动性操作改变了真实动作与虚拟动作之间的关系，体现在视觉运动一致性（如动作与结果之间的时间或空间不一致）和运动控制方面（如用预先录制的动作替代用户动作）。所有权操作则侧重于改变虚拟身体或肢体的特征，包括物理一致性（如实景与类似物体的表征）、空间一致性（如虚拟与真实身体位置的对齐）以及刺激一致性（如同步与异步的视觉触觉反馈）。
能动性操作对内隐SoA有强烈影响，而只有视觉运动一致性对内隐SoO有轻微影响。所有权操作在不同程度上影响内隐SoO：空间一致性和刺激一致性有中等程度的影响，而物理一致性影响较小。这些操作均未影响内隐SoA。内隐与外显测量之间的一致性是异质性的，表明这些指标可能捕捉到不同的潜在过程。我们观察到，能动性操作在SoA和SoO指标上的一致性有限，而所有权操作在SoA指标上一致性较高，在SoO指标上一致性中等。
这些发现表明，通过有针对性的VR操作，SoA和SoO在功能上可以分离——例如，身体外观的变化不会影响内隐能动性。然而，SoA和SoO也表现出依赖于情境的相互作用，可以看到视觉运动一致性操作会影响内隐SoO。这凸显了它们在具身自我表征中的部分独立性和动态相互作用。总体而言，虚拟现实为通过克服传统实验室环境限制的范式来探索SoA和SoO提供了一个有价值的工具。至关重要的是，我们的综述确定了哪些类型的操作倾向于选择性地影响一种体验，哪些会同时影响两者，为设计更具针对性和理论驱动的未来研究提供了一个框架。
