Under normal circumstances, we experience that our center of awareness is located behind
our eyes and inside our own body. To learn more about the perceptual processes that
underlie this tight coupling between the spatial dimensions of our consciously perceived
self and our physical body, we conducted a series of experiments using an ‘out-of-body
illusion’. In this illusion, the conscious sense of self is displaced in the testing room by
experimental manipulation of the congruency of visual and tactile information and a
change in the visual perspective. We demonstrate that when healthy individuals experience
that they are located in a different place from their real body, they disown this body
and no longer perceive it as part of themselves. Our findings are important because they
reveal a relationship between the representation of self-location in the local environment
and the multisensory representation of one’s own body