The 'Enfacement' illusion: A window on the plasticity of the self. 2018

Giuseppina Porciello, and Ilaria Bufalari, and Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and Enrico Di Pace, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti
Dipartimento di Psicologia, Sapienza, Università degli studi di Roma, Rome, Italy; IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy. Electronic address: giuseppina.porciello@uniroma1.it.

Understanding how self-representation is built, maintained and updated across the lifespan is a fundamental challenge for cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Studies demonstrate that the detection of body-related multisensory congruency builds bodily and facial self-representations that are crucial to developing self-recognition. Studies showing that the bodily self is more malleable than previously believed were mainly concerned with full-bodies and non-facial body parts. Crucially, however, intriguing recent evidence indicates that simple experimental manipulations could even affect self-face representation that has long been considered a stable construct impervious to change. In this review, we discuss how Interpersonal Multisensory Stimulation (IMS) paradigms can be used to temporarily induce Enfacement, i.e., the subjective illusion of looking at oneself in the mirror when in fact looking at another person's face. We show that Enfacement is a subtle but robust phenomenon occurring in a variety of experimental conditions and assessed by multiple explicit and implicit measures. We critically discuss recent findings on i) the role of sensory extero/proprio-ceptive (visual, tactile, and motor) and interoceptive (cardiac) signals in self-face plasticity, ii) the importance of multisensory integration mechanisms for the bodily self, and iii) the neural network related to IMS-driven changes in self-other face processing, within the predictive coding theoretical framework.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D007088 Illusions The misinterpretation of a real external, sensory experience. Autokinetic Effect,Autokinetic Illusions,Effect, Autokinetic,Illusions, Auditory,Illusions, Kinesthetic,Illusions, Tactile,Illusions, Visual,Auditory Illusion,Auditory Illusions,Autokinetic Effects,Autokinetic Illusion,Effects, Autokinetic,Illusion,Illusion, Auditory,Illusion, Autokinetic,Illusion, Kinesthetic,Illusion, Tactile,Illusion, Visual,Illusions, Autokinetic,Kinesthetic Illusion,Kinesthetic Illusions,Tactile Illusion,Tactile Illusions,Visual Illusion,Visual Illusions
D001828 Body Image Individuals' concept of their own bodies. Body Identity,Body Representation,Body Schema,Body Images,Body Representations,Body Schemas,Identity, Body,Image, Body,Representation, Body,Schema, Body
D006801 Humans Members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D012649 Self Concept Persons' view of themselves. Self Esteem,Self Perception,Self Confidence,Self-Perception,Concept, Self,Confidence, Self,Esteem, Self,Perception, Self,Perceptions, Self,Self Esteems,Self Perceptions,Self-Perceptions
D014796 Visual Perception The selecting and organizing of visual stimuli based on the individual's past experience. Visual Processing,Perception, Visual,Processing, Visual
D055698 Touch Perception The process by which the nature and meaning of tactile stimuli are recognized and interpreted by the brain, such as realizing the characteristics or name of an object being touched. Tactile Perception,Perception, Tactile,Perception, Touch,Perceptions, Tactile,Perceptions, Touch,Tactile Perceptions,Touch Perceptions
D021641 Recognition, Psychology The knowledge or perception that someone or something present has been previously encountered. Familiarity,Psychological Recognition,Recognition (Psychology),Psychology Recognition,Recognition, Psychological

Related Publications

Giuseppina Porciello, and Ilaria Bufalari, and Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and Enrico Di Pace, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti
February 2019, Scientific reports,
Giuseppina Porciello, and Ilaria Bufalari, and Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and Enrico Di Pace, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti
October 2024, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences,
Giuseppina Porciello, and Ilaria Bufalari, and Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and Enrico Di Pace, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti
February 2020, Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior,
Giuseppina Porciello, and Ilaria Bufalari, and Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and Enrico Di Pace, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti
May 2020, IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics,
Giuseppina Porciello, and Ilaria Bufalari, and Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and Enrico Di Pace, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti
April 2021, Social neuroscience,
Giuseppina Porciello, and Ilaria Bufalari, and Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and Enrico Di Pace, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti
December 2012, Consciousness and cognition,
Giuseppina Porciello, and Ilaria Bufalari, and Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and Enrico Di Pace, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti
January 2015, PloS one,
Giuseppina Porciello, and Ilaria Bufalari, and Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and Enrico Di Pace, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti
January 2022, Frontiers in psychiatry,
Giuseppina Porciello, and Ilaria Bufalari, and Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and Enrico Di Pace, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti
April 2019, Schizophrenia research,
Giuseppina Porciello, and Ilaria Bufalari, and Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and Enrico Di Pace, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti
January 2023, Frontiers in human neuroscience,
Copied contents to your clipboard!