The rubber hand illusion revisited: visuotactile integration and self-attribution

Watching a rubber hand being stroked, while one's own unseen hand is synchronously stroked, may cause the rubber hand to be attributed to one's own body, to "feel like it's my hand." A behavioral measure of the rubber hand illusion (RHI) is a drift of the perceived position of one's own hand toward the rubber hand. The authors investigated (a) the influence of general body scheme representations on the RHI in Experiments 1 and 2 and (b) the necessary conditions of visuotactile stimulation underlying the RHI in Experiments 3 and 4. Overall, the results suggest that at the level of the process underlying the build up of the RHI, bottom-up processes of visuotactile correlation drive the illusion as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition. Conversely, at the level of the phenomenological content, the illusion is modulated by top-down influences originating from the representation of one's own body.     

The behavioral activation for depression scale-short form: development and validation

Following a landmark component analysis of cognitive therapy by Jacobson and colleagues (1996), there has been renewed interest in behavioral activation (BA) treatments for depression. The Behavioral Activation for Depression Scale (BADS) was developed to measure when and how clients become activated over the course of BA treatment. Multiple studies have provided initial support for the BADS but have also identified several potential problems. Four studies were conducted in order to develop and provide initial evaluation of a short form of the BADS that addresses these concerns. In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted on existing data using the original BADS in order to identify items to retain for the short form. In Study 2, these items were administered to a new sample of college students with elevated depressive symptoms and were analyzed with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Study 3 examined the predictive validity of the BADS-SF by examining the BADS-SF and depression scores in relation to activity tracking and reward-value ratings over the course of 1 week. Study 4 examined BADS-SF data over the course of BA treatment for two clients using cross-lagged panel correlations. With one client, changes in BADS-SF scores led changes in depression scores by 1 week, whereas with the other client changes in BADS-SF and depression scores occurred concurrently. These studies resulted in a nine-item scale that demonstrated good item characteristics as well as acceptable internal consistency reliability, construct validity, and predictive validity.     

Psychosis associated with anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antibodies

We describe the eighth case study of a female diagnosed with anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor encephalitis without an identified tumor who presented with floridly psychotic symptoms following a 2-week prodromal phase with new-onset headaches and presyncopal episodes. While hospitalized, the patient had seizures, autonomic dysfunction, involuntary movements, and a decline in mental status. A subsequent assay was positive for anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor receptor antibodies. In contrast to most reported cases, an initial trial with corticosteroids was therapeutically unsuccessful. Subsequent treatment with intravenous immunoglobulins, however, resulted in a prompt, robust clinical response and enabled the patient to be rapidly discharged from the hospital, with minimal neuropsychiatric sequelae.     

Use of the ten-point clock test to compare executive functioning across 24 months in patients with subcortical vascular dementia

The Ten-point Clock Test can be used to identify early forms of Alzheimer's disease because it is reliable, well accepted, and easily administered at the bedside. Nevertheless, its clinical role in the detection of early dementia and its correlations with other cognitive processes is still under investigation. Vascular dementia is an uncertain nosological entity, in which unevenly distributed patterns of cognitive deficits comprising slowing of cognitive processing and impairment of executive function occur. The present study assessed how the Clock Test scores correlated with a number of other neuropsychological and functional tests in a sample of 144 patients with vascular dementia, who were followed for a period of 24 mo. At baseline, at 12 mo. and at 24 mo. subjects were administered a battery of tests, including the Mini-Mental State Examination, word fluency, visuospatial skills, an evaluation of hetero- and autotopognosia (knowledge of self), the Proverbs Test, and the Ten-point Clock Test. For these patients scores on the Clock Test correlated significantly with semantic abilities, with abstract reasoning capacities, visuospatial perception, and with right and left recognition.     

Beyond the colour of my skin: How skin colour affects the sense of body-ownership

Multisensory stimulation has been shown to alter the sense of body-ownership. Given that perceived similarity between one's own body and those of others is crucial for social cognition, we investigated whether multisensory stimulation can lead participants to experience ownership over a hand of different skin colour. Results from two studies using introspective, behavioural and physiological methods show that, following synchronous visuotactile (VT) stimulation, participants can experience body-ownership over hands that seem to belong to a different racial group. Interestingly, a baseline measure of implicit racial bias did not predict whether participants would experience the RHI, but the overall strength of experienced body-ownership seemed to predict the participants' post-illusion implicit racial bias with those who experienced a stronger RHI showing a lower bias. These findings suggest that multisensory experiences can override strict ingroup/outgroup distinctions based on skin colour and point to a key role for sensory processing in social cognition.     

More of myself: Manipulating interoceptive awareness by heightened attention to bodily and narrative aspects of the self

Psychology distinguishes between a bodily and a narrative self. Within neuroscience, models of the bodily self are based on exteroceptive sensorimotor processes or on the integration of interoceptive sensations. Recent research has revealed interactions between interoceptive and exteroceptive processing of self-related information, for example that mirror self-observation can improve interoceptive awareness. Using heartbeat perception, we measured the effect on interoceptive awareness of two experimental manipulations, designed to heighten attention to bodily and narrative aspects of the self. Participants gazed at a photograph of their own face or at self-relevant words. In both experimental conditions interoceptive awareness was significantly increased, compared to baseline. Results show that attention to narrative aspects of self, previously regarded as relying on higher-order processes, has an effect similar to self-face stimuli in improving interoceptive awareness. Our findings extend the previously observed interaction between the bodily self and interoception to more abstract amodal representations of the self.     

Active and passive-touch during interpersonal multisensory stimulation change self–other boundaries

In the “enfacement” illusion seeing an unfamiliar face being touched at the same time as one’s own face evokes changes in self-face recognition. We investigated the contribution of proprioceptive and motor signals derived from self-generated actions in the sensory-driven malleability of self–other boundaries during the “enfacement” illusion. Changes in self-face recognition during active- and passive-touch interpersonal visuo-tactile stimulation were quantified by means of psychophysical and psychometric tasks. Active- and passive-touch evoked comparable changes in the categorical boundaries of self–other distinction, changing the extent to which the other is assimilated into the mental self-representation. Actively touching or simply feeling touch on one’s own face with concurrent observed touch on someone else’s face seems to elicit comparable changes in self-recognition, suggesting that afferent input might be sufficient for updating one’s body-image, although some components of the experience of self-identification seem to be more affected by passive- than by active-touch.     

I suffer more from your pain when you act like me: Being imitated enhances affective responses to seeing someone else in pain

Social–psychological research has suggested that being imitated changes the way that we experience others: We like someone who imitates us more, and the interaction with this person runs more smoothly. Whether being imitated also affects basic social reactions, such as empathy for pain, is an open question. Empathy for pain refers to the observation that perceiving another person in pain results in pain-related brain activation in the observer. The aim of the present study was to combine the two lines of research, to investigate whether being imitated can influence empathy for pain. To this end, we developed an experimental approach combining an imitation task with a pain perception task. Subjective reports, as well as physiological responses, indicated that being imitated enhances affective responses to seeing someone else in pain. Furthermore, using rubber hand illusion measures, we provided evidence for the role of shared representations in the sensory and motor domains as a core underlying mechanism. In this way, our study integrated social–psychological research on being imitated with cognitive research on empathy for pain. This has broad implications, since imitation plays a crucial role in our daily social interactions, and our study provides insights into a basic cognitive mechanism that might underlie these social situations.