We experience our bodies as the boundary of the self. Where our skin ends and the outside world begins.
This boundary is shaped through ongoing sensory processing. In humans, this sense of separation depends in part on the left hemisphere. When it's disrupted, after strokes or under psychedelics, that boundary can dissolve, giving rise to the feeling that the self extends into the surrounding world.
Is this unique to us or our big beautiful brains?
This awesome study aims to get at this by showing that octopuses can experience a version of the rubber hand illusion, responding to touch on a fake arm as if it were part of their own body.
If a nervous system can redraw the boundary of the body, perhaps the "self" is less a fixed object than a dynamic model, continuously updated by sensory information from the world around us.
https://t.co/8BLNUrgdlN