Experience of body ownership (EBO)

A central plank of embodied-selfhood and a key testbed for interoceptive-inference in Seth (2013). EBO is probed with the rubber-hand-illusion and full-body illusions, and Seth argues it is shaped by predictive multisensory integration of precision-weighted interoceptive and exteroceptive signals.

Predictive-coding account

Classical multisensory-integration accounts explain the RHI via visual capture and statistical correlations across vision/touch/proprioception. Seth recasts this in predictive-coding terms: minimizing self-related precision-weighted prediction error updates high-level (amodal) self-priors to incorporate the fake hand. Consistent with this, mere expectation of correlated input can induce the RHI (Ferri et al. 2013).

Interoceptive contribution — the novel evidence

• Suzuki et al. (2013): an augmented-reality virtual hand flashing in time with the heartbeat (cardio-visual synchrony) enhances ownership, measured by questionnaire and proprioceptive drift.
• Aspell et al. (2013): cardio-visual synchrony applied to a full virtual body increases identification with it.
• Tsakiris et al. (2011): lower interoceptive-sensitivity predicts greater RHI susceptibility — read as lower precision-weighting of interoceptive prediction errors.
• Autonomic accompaniments (temperature drop, histamine reactivity, skin-conductance to rubber-hand threat) fit descending self-related predictions tuning autonomic reflexes via active-inference.

Together these show statistical correlations between interoceptive and exteroceptive channels can update self-models, extending multisensory prediction-error minimization inward.

As a model for insight (Farb et al. 2015)

Farb et al. (2015) read the RHI as a concrete illustration of prioritizing priors (visual interpretation) over prediction errors (afferent interoceptive/proprioceptive signals from the real hand) — the same active/perceptual-inference tension they apply to contemplative practice. They suggest perceptual-inference (weighting sensory PEs over priors) could, in principle, similarly reduce false inferences about the relationship between one’s body and the world, extending the RHI’s relevance beyond body ownership per se toward a general model of interoceptive insight.