%0 Journal Article
%T Motor Simulation and the Bodily Self
%A Francesca Ferri
%A Francesca Frassinetti
%A Marcello Costantini
%A Vittorio Gallese
%J PLOS ONE
%D 2012
%I Public Library of Science (PLoS)
%R 10.1371/journal.pone.0017927
%X Previous studies demonstrated the human ability to implicitly recognize their own body. When submitted to a visual matching task, participants showed the so-called self-advantage, that is, a better performance with self rather than others' body or body parts. Here, we investigated whether the body self-advantage relies upon a motor representation of one's body. Participants were submitted to a laterality judgment of self and others' hands (Experiment 1 and 3), which involves a sensory-motor mental simulation. Moreover, to investigate whether the self-advantage emerges also when an explicit self processing is required, the same participants were submitted to an explicit self-body recognition task (Experiment 2). Participants showed the self-advantage when performing the laterality judgment, but not when self-recognition was explicitly required. Thus, implicit and explicit recognition of the bodily self dissociate and only an implicit recognition of the bodily self, mapped in motor terms, allows the self-advantage to emerge.
%U http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0017927