Role of Interoception in Body Ownership

Seth and Friston (2016), in a review synthesizing active interoceptive inference and its role in emotion and selfhood, described evidence that interoception shapes experiences of body ownership. They noted that illusions of body ownership, such as the rubber hand illusion and the so-called full body illusion, are normally induced by false visuo-tactile congruence but can also be induced by cardio-visual feedback, in which a virtual body or body part flashes in time with a participant's heartbeat, and by visual feedback of respiratory patterns. The authors concluded that these findings support a multimodal influence of interoception on embodied selfhood, while noting that how interoceptive predictions and prediction errors shape higher levels of selfhood remains an open area for investigation (Seth & Friston, 2016)