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During pregnancy many elements of the bodily experience change, suggesting that measuring these constructs may require different instruments to those validated in the general population. This study reports an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis exploration of the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) in 716 pregnant women (mean gestation 26.4 weeks), from six different datasets who completed the MAIA online. Exploratory factor analysis condensed the questionnaire from a 32- to a 19- item scale, with five factor structure, which best fitted the data. Key subscales of Trust, Attention Regulation, Self-Regulation and Not Distracting remained robust. The one remaining item from the Noticing subscale loaded heavily with the Emotional Awareness subscale. Subscales of Body Listening, Not Worrying and Noticing did not load and therefore were excluded as factors. This led to the development of the scale referred to as the MAIA-Preg, which demonstrated a good fit with a confirmatory factor analysis along with good subscale reliability (ω= 0.73 -0.92), and measurement invariance for second and third trimesters. The MAIA-Preg was also found to be a good fit for separate non-pregnant (N = 396) and postnatal (N = 174) samples and thus provides a reliable and valid measure, providing nuanced information about the bodily experience in perinatal populations, allowing comparisons of changes to interoceptive sensibility the perinatal period.

Current pharmaceutical interventions for chronic pain are reported to be minimally effective, leading researchers to investigate non-pharmaceutical avenues for chronic pain treatment. One such avenue is resizing illusions delivered using augmented reality. These illusions resize the affected body part through stretching or shrinking manipulations and have been shown to give analgesic effects; however, the neural underpinnings of these illusions remain undefined. Steady-state evoked potentials (SSEPs) have been studied within populations without chronic pain undergoing hand-based resizing illusions, finding no convincing differences in SSEP amplitudes during illusory stretching. Here, we present comparable findings from a sample with chronic pain, who are thought to have blurred cortical representations of painful body parts, but again find no clear differences in SSEP amplitude during illusory stretching. However, no significant decreases in pain ratings were found following illusory resizing, and changes in SSEP amplitudes are thought to possibly reflect experiences of illusory analgesia. Despite a lack of illusory analgesia across the sample, several participants experienced clinically meaningful levels of pain reduction following illusory resizing, highlighting the potential of resizing illusions as an analgesia treatment avenue. Subjective illusory experience data showed significantly greater experiences of the illusion in the multisensory (visuotactile) condition compared to non-illusion conditions and a unimodal visual condition, replicating findings from participants without chronic hand-based pain. Exploratory analyses using subjective disownership data show that the multisensory condition did not elicit significant disownership experiences, demonstrating that the pain reductions seen in the multisensory condition do not arise from disownership of the limb, but more likely as a direct result of the illusory resizing manipulations.

Bodily resizing illusions typically use visual and/or tactile inputs to produce a vivid experience of one’s body changing size. Naturalistic auditory input (an input that reflects the natural sounds of a stimulus) has been used to increase illusory experience during the rubber hand illusion, whilst non-naturalistic auditory input can influence estimations of finger length. We aimed to use a non-naturalistic auditory input during a hand-based resizing illusion using augmented reality, to assess whether the addition of an auditory input would increase both subjective illusion strength and measures of performance-based tasks. Forty-four participants completed the following three conditions: no finger stretching, finger stretching without tactile feedback and finger stretching with tactile feedback. Half of the participants had an auditory input throughout all the conditions, whilst the other half did not. After each condition, the participants were given one of the following three performance tasks: stimulated (right) hand dot touch task, non-stimulated (left) hand dot touch task, and a ruler judgement task. Dot tasks involved participants reaching for the location of a virtual dot, whereas the ruler task concerned estimates of the participant’s own finger on a ruler whilst the hand was hidden from view. After all trials, the participants completed a questionnaire capturing subjective illusion strength. The addition of auditory input increased subjective illusion strength for manipulations without tactile feedback but not those with tactile feedback. No facilitatory effects of audio were found for any performance task. We conclude that adding auditory input to illusory finger stretching increased subjective illusory experience in the absence of tactile feedback but did not affect performance-based measures.

Taking and posting selfies is a popular activity, with some individuals taking and sharing multiple selfies each day. The influence of the selfie angle, as opposed to more traditional photo angles such as the allocentric images we see in print media, on our aesthetic judgements of images of bodies has not been explored. This study compared the attractiveness and weight judgements that participants made of images of the same bodies taken from different visual angles over a series of four experiments (total N = 272). We considered how these judgements may relate to disordered eating thoughts and behaviours. Selfies were judged to be slimmer than images from other perspectives, and egocentric images were judged to be the least attractive. The way participants rated bodies seen from different perspectives was related to their own disordered eating thoughts and behaviours. These results contribute to our understanding of how we perceive the images we see on social media and how these might be related to how we feel about our own and other people’s bodies.

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a pleasant tingling sensation felt across the scalp and neck, widely reported to reduce anxiety and improve sleep. The Proximity Prediction Hypothesis (PPH) is the first comprehensive predictive coding model explaining ASMR’s underlying neural mechanism. PPH posits that near-field acoustic cues from common ASMR triggers (e.g., brushing sounds, whispered speech) engage the audio-tactile Peripersonal Space Network, generating a top-down prediction of gentle C-tactile (CT) touch on CT fibre-rich skin of the scalp and neck. This prediction suppresses locus coeruleus (LC) arousal and increases vagal output, offering a mechanistic explanation for the phenomenon’s therapeutic benefits. In a subjective-experience survey ( N  = 64), ASMR-labelled trials were rated significantly more pleasant but only slightly more arousing than controls. Pleasantness predicted both the presence and intensity of tingles, supporting PPH’s core claim that hedonic value, rather than sympathetic activation, drives the graded somatosensory response. PPH situates ASMR within the Neurovisceral Integration framework, predicting measurable Central Nervous System-Autonomic Nervous System (CNS-ANS) markers (beta-band desynchronisation in the posterior insula and proportional increases in high-frequency heart rate variability with tingle intensity). It further predicts reduced LC activity during ASMR, stronger effects in individuals with high interoceptive prediction error (e.g., anxiety, autism), and attenuation of tingles when spatial proximity cues are removed. By integrating auditory proximity, CT-touch anticipation, and autonomic regulation into a single predictive-coding account, PPH provides a unified, testable framework for explaining ASMR, offering a blueprint for translating this sensory phenomenon into targeted, evidence-based interventions for anxiety and sleep disorders.

Pregnancy is a time of great physical and psychological change. As well as prominent changes in the external appearance of the body, such as the baby bump, there are also substantial changes taking place within the body. Our awareness of, and attention towards, internal bodily signals (interoception) is thought to have a direct impact on how we feel about our bodies. Therefore, understanding how our experience of these interoceptive signals might change during pregnancy may have important implications for maternal wellbeing. This study examined body satisfaction and interoceptive sensibility (subjective experience of interoception) in pregnant and non-pregnant women with and without children. Feelings towards pregnancy-specific changes in body satisfaction and interoceptive sensibility were also examined in women in their first pregnancy (primigravida) and subsequent pregnancies (multigravida). It was found that pregnancy did not directly impact levels of body satisfaction, instead pregnant and non-pregnant women with children reported less satisfaction with their bodies compared to those without children. Primigravida women were more satisfied with the appearance of pregnancy specific bodily changes compared to multigravida women. Interestingly, these differences in body satisfaction in those with children (pregnant and non-pregnant) were mediated by the extent to which women trusted their bodies (measure of interoceptive sensibility). All other pregnancy related changes in interoceptive sensibility and body satisfaction were either non-significant or had small effect sizes. These results may suggest body trust as an important factor to support during the transition to parenthood in order to improve body satisfaction in mothers.

The body is intrinsic to our sense of self and as such, any theoretical account of the self should also include contributions of the body. This Collection incorporates a series of papers that demonstrate the inextricable relationship between body and self. The papers include studies of body illusions and studies of observed differences in bodily experience in participants with psychiatric and physical conditions. Papers in the Collection also address methodological issues, because measuring and manipulating the bodily self does not come without challenges; subjective experiences are difficult to capture empirically. Making progress on these methodological limitations is crucial to further develop experimental design and thus our understanding of self-body relations.

Demonstrations that the brain can incorporate a fake limb into our bodily representations when stroked in synchrony with our unseen real hand [(the rubber hand illusion (RHI)] are now commonplace. Such demonstrations highlight the dynamic flexibility of the perceptual body image, but evidence for comparable RHI-sensitive changes in the body schema used for action is less common. Recent evidence from the RHI supports a distinction between bodily representations for perception (body image) and for action (body schema) (Kammers et al. in Neuropsychologia 44:2430-2436, 2006). The current study challenges and extends these findings by demonstrating that active synchronous stroking of a brush not only elicits perceptual embodiment of a fake limb (body image) but also affects subsequent reaching error (body schema). Participants were presented with two moving fake left hands. When only one was synchronous during active touch, ownership was claimed for the synchronous hand only and the accuracy of reaching was consistent with control of the synchronous hand. When both fake hands were synchronous, ownership was claimed over both, but only one was controlled. Thus, it would appear that fake limbs can be incorporated into the body schema as well as the body image, but while multiple limbs can be incorporated into the body image, the body schema can accommodate only one.

Typically, multisensory illusion paradigms emphasise the importance of synchronous visuotactile integration to induce subjective embodiment towards another body. However, the extent to which embodiment is due to the ‘visual capture’ of congruent visuoproprioceptive information alone remains unclear. Thus, across two experiments (total N  = 80), we investigated how mere visual observation of a mannequin body, viewed from a first-person perspective, influenced subjective embodiment independently from concomitant visuotactile integration. Moreover, we investigated whether slow, affective touch on participants’ own, unseen body (without concomitant touch on the seen mannequin) disrupted visual capture effects to a greater degree than fast, non-affective touch. In total, 40% of participants experienced subjective embodiment towards the mannequin body following mere visual observation, and this effect was significantly higher than conditions which included touch to participants own, unseen body. The velocity of the touch that participants received (affective/non-affective) did not differ in modulating visual capture effects. Furthermore, the effects of visual capture and perceived pleasantness of touch was not modulated by subthreshold eating disorder psychopathology. Overall, this study suggests that congruent visuoproprioceptive cues can be sufficient to induce subjective embodiment of a whole body, in the absence of visuotactile integration and beyond mere confabulatory responses.

Historically, body size overestimation has been linked to abnormal levels of body dissatisfaction found in eating disorders. However, recently this relationship has been called into question. Indeed, despite a link between how we perceive and how we feel about our body seeming intuitive, until now lack of an experimental method to manipulate body size has meant that a causal link, even in healthy participants, has remained elusive. Recent developments in body perception research demonstrate that the perceptual experience of the body can be readily manipulated using multisensory illusions. The current study exploits such illusions to modulate perceived body size in an attempt to influence body satisfaction. Participants were presented with stereoscopic video images of slimmer and wider mannequin bodies viewed through head-mounted displays from first person perspective. Illusory ownership was induced by synchronously stroking the seen mannequin body with the unseen real body. Pre and post-illusion affective and perceptual measures captured changes in perceived body size and body satisfaction. Illusory ownership of a slimmer body resulted in participants perceiving their actual body as slimmer and giving higher ratings of body satisfaction demonstrating a direct link between perceptual and affective body representations. Change in body satisfaction following illusory ownership of a wider body, however, was related to degree of (non-clinical) eating disorder psychopathology, which can be linked to fluctuating body representations found in clinical samples. The results suggest that body perception is linked to body satisfaction and may be of importance for eating disorder symptomology.