Bodily self-consciousness, the awareness of one's own body, is fundamental to human experience but poorly understood. By combining an ingestible capsule that measures gut activity (temperature, pressure, pH, and gastric peak frequency) with surface electrogastrography during a virtual bodily illusion, specific patterns of stomach and bowel activity were found to covary with distinct facets of bodily self-consciousness, such as feelings of body agency, location, and disembodiment. These findings reveal a link between gut physiology and the self-conscious perception of being embodied, demonstrating the potential of minimally invasive probes for studying mind-gut connections.
A new questionnaire, the Exteroceptive Body Awareness (EBA) scale, was developed and validated to measure bodily self-consciousness based on signals from outside the body, such as vision and touch, which are distinct from internal body signals like heartbeat. Exploratory factor analysis with 302 participants produced an 18-item questionnaire with four factors. Confirmatory factor analysis with 184 participants showed acceptable fit for a bifactor model. The scale demonstrated good internal consistency and was cross-validated with existing body awareness questionnaires and behavioral measures. Exteroceptive and interoceptive awareness are proposed as distinct but interconnected dimensions of bodily self-consciousness.