Abstract

The aim of the study is to experimentally test the relationship between multisensory "embodiment" processes and body representation. Forty-five healthy adults completed the Rubber Hand Illusion paradigm, considered a measure of the Body Schema, with congruent, incongruent, and purely visual stimulation conditions, and the Sidedness attentional task, a Simon-type spatial stimulus–response compatibility paradigm that assesses the implicit coding of hand position relative to the side of the body within the Body Structural Representation (BSR). The results did not reveal a link between the measures derived from the two tasks suggesting an independence between the two phenomena, consistent with the hypothesis that BSR is a more stable and implicit body-coding system compared to the dynamic processes of "embodiment".