International Association of CyberPsychology, Training, and Rehabilitation

The Therapeutics of Illusory-embodiment and Sensoriality

Altered states of embodiment are becoming a critical thought piece to both scientiﬁc understanding of bodily self-consciousness and processes related to metaverse reality.

A feeling of disembodiment during everyday activities may be common to certain conditions; however, viewing disembodiment through a sensorium lens (especially the sense of touch and peripheral nerves) can help inform and provide identifiers for the therapeutics of "illusory-embodiment" in relation to external objects and what might constitute a resonant cascade or methodology to engage/entourage the sensorium.

Such as augmenting reality with the actual (real) presence of an acoustic metronome or fragrance, to be a source pathway for multisensory binding.

Mismatching sensory signals from our body (w/mixed reality) to modulate embodiment through temporally fused or crisscrossed sensoria -- shows how these mismatches can affect phenomenal and physiological perceptual aspects of ourselves.

This can radiate into both embodiment and measured thresholds for conscious-mindfulness -- across readily measured multimodal (brain and nervous system signals) as well as dynamics in the social world around us.

Although the plasticity of the "bodily-self" has traditionally been measured as the susceptibility to illusory extraneousness to aspects of embodiment, there's currently scant data on how higher delay sensitivity in terms of own-body embodiment may suggest a more or less plastic sense of bodily self or vice-versa.

This begs the question of whether there is a ‘‘generality in body plasticity’’ or promptness (startle/delayed startle) to triggers related to own-body disembodiment (trauma/PTS, Concussive Brain Injury/TBI).

A paradoxical process of the temporal binding window (TBW) shows both lower susceptibility to a small TBW leading to lower susceptibility to illusory embodiment of say a mirror-reflected rubber hand as your own, for instance. Yet, that same small TBW can also lead to higher susceptibility to own-body d....

Such a contrast may suggest neuroanatomical ﬁndings -- in clinical settings with disorders of embodiment -- where we may approach augmented reality in distinct ways (and certainly need separate channels) and sensorium plasticity components for therapeutic protocols. Say one for supernumerary (extraneous rubber hand embodiment) and one for own-body disembodiment.

A differentiation could help to explain proneness differences to a disembodiment illusion: where a less plastic bodily self (thus a weaker susceptibility to supernumerary embodiment) is paired w/a highly plastic sense of body which maintains embodiment even during stronger multimodal (synesthetic) mismatches. This capacity to adapt their bodily sense to the ongoing mismatching signals may also suggest evidence for the differential contribution of sensorimotor signals as compared to the "somatosensory as a maintainer of our core sense of body".

Expanding the Bioﬁeld to include bodily-self-consciousness.

Understanding how our sense of body may change through our interactions w/a mediated view of reality and the temporal mismatches that this may entail is emerging as ultra-important. In particular, it may be a useful method to measure the degree/sensory weighting of bodily-self-plasticity in the general as well as clinical populations.

Relevant practical knowledge for a near future where a "mishmash-mix-up" of reality technologies will be ubiquitous, and thus constantly manipulating our sense-of-body is essential. Ways to study and consider the sensorium of bodily self consciousness affords an efficacious path: both where a sense of disembodiment is induced and, as a diagnostic device.

How the self-consciousness of bodily sensorium studies can inform our understanding of our own body's perception, instead of fake or virtual body (digitally-signaling, visual manipulation of embodiment) manifestation avatars becomes a field of ripe endeavors.