Final Report Summary - BODILY SELF (Embodied Minds and Mentalised Bodies)
This project has achieved unique insights regarding the psychological and neural basis of our bodily self awareness, revealing that its nature is dynamic and social. That is, our appreciation of body is not as fixed as it may appear but rather it can be changed based on the information we received from our bodies in the moment, as well as based on social feedback from other people. These insights have important implications for certain pathologies of awareness in which patients may not realise that they are ill, as it happens following right hemisphere stroke and in anorexia nervosa. Our studies also revealed that experiences that combine the two sources of information about the self, such as for example when another person is touching us in an affective, supportive manner, have the greatest impact on how we experience ourselves.