Psychophysiology
April 1, 2026
Sura Genc, Elif Surer, Marc Wittmann et al.
Flow experience is characterized by becoming deeply absorbed in a task, by losing track of time, and diminished self-awareness. Psychological flow research typically involves the qualitative or quantitative assessment of flow states after the experience with questionnaires. This approach is limited, as post-task reports provide an overall assessment of the whole experience, but lack the...
Nature Communications
August 13, 2025
William Wong, Rubén Herzog, Kátia Cristine Andrade et al.
10 citations
Magneto/electroencephalography (M/EEG) studies of dreaming are an essential paradigm in the investigation of neurocognitive processes of human consciousness during sleep, but they are limited by the number of observations that can be collected per study. Dream research also involves substantial methodological and conceptual variability, which poses problems for the integration of results. To...
Scientific Reports
March 13, 2024
Matt P D Gwyther, Bigna Lenggenhager, Jennifer Windt et al.
3 citations
Depersonalisation (DP) is characterized by fundamental alterations to the sense of self that include feelings of detachment and estrangement from one's body. We conducted an online study in healthy participants (n = 514) with DP traits to investigate and quantify the subjective experience of body and self during waking and dreaming, as the vast majority of previous studies focussed on waking...
October 11, 2023
Maria Niedernhuber, Aninka Charlotte Schroeder, Céline Lercher et al.
preprint
Understanding the neural substrate of altered conscious states is an important cultural, scientific and clinical endeavour. Although hypnosis causes strong shifts in conscious perception and cognition, it remains largely unclear how hypnosis affects information processing in cortical networks. Here we manipulated the depth of hypnotic states to study information processing between cortical...
Consciousness and Cognition
August 1, 2023
Burak Erdeniz, Ege Tekgün, Bigna Lenggenhager et al.
2 citations
The peripersonal space, that is, the limited space surrounding the body, involves multisensory coding and representation of the self in space. Previous studies have shown that peripersonal space representation and the visual perspective on the environment can be dramatically altered when neurotypical individuals self-identify with a distant avatar (i.e., in virtual reality) or during clinical...
May 16, 2023
William Wong, Kátia C. Andrade, Thomas Andrillon et al.
21 citations
preprint
Magneto/electroencephalography (M/EEG) studies of dreaming are an essential paradigm in the investigation of neurocognitive processes of human consciousness during sleep, but they are limited by the number of observations that can be collected per study. Dream research also involves substantial methodological and conceptual variability, which poses problems for the integration of results. To...
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
December 6, 2019
Jasmine T. Ho, Katrin H. Preller, Bigna Lenggenhager
61 citations
As a continual source of sensory input and fundamental component of self-referential processing, the body holds an integral modulatory role in cognition. In a healthy state, predictive coding of multisensory integration promotes the construction of a coherent self. However, several psychiatric disorders comprise aberrant perceptions of the bodily self that are purported to involve discrepancies...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
April 12, 2019
Valdas Noreika, Jennifer Windt, Markus Kern et al.
preprint
Recently, cortical correlates of specific dream contents have been reported, such as the activation of the sensorimotor cortex during dreamed hand clenching. Yet, the causal mechanisms underlying specific dream content remain largely elusive. Here, we investigated how alterations in the excitability of sensorimotor areas through transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) might alter dream...
Frontiers in Neurology
2019
Carla Thür, Marte Roel Lesur, Christopher J Bockisch et al.
12 citations
The bodily self is a fundamental part of human self-consciousness and relies on online multimodal information and prior beliefs about one's own body. While the contribution of the vestibular system in this process remains under-investigated, it has been theorized to be important. The present experiment investigates the influence of conflicting gravity-related visual and bodily information on...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Jennifer Windt, Dominic L Harkness, Bigna Lenggenhager
The contrast between self- and other-produced tickles, as a special case of sensory attenuation for self-produced actions, has long been a target of empirical research. While in standard wake states it is nearly impossible to tickle oneself, there are interesting exceptions. Notably, participants awakened from REM (rapid eye movement-) sleep dreams are able to tickle themselves. So far,...
European journal of pain (London, England)
September 2011
Alexander Hänsel, Bigna Lenggenhager, Roland Von Känel et al.
Pain and the conscious mind (or the self) are experienced in our body. Both are intimately linked to the subjective quality of conscious experience. Here, we used virtual reality technology and visuo-tactile conflicts in healthy subjects to test whether experimentally induced changes of bodily self-consciousness (self-location; self-identification) lead to changes in pain perception. We found...
Neuron
April 28, 2011
Silvio Ionta, Lukas Heydrich, Bigna Lenggenhager et al.
Self-consciousness has mostly been approached by philosophical enquiry and not by empirical neuroscientific study, leading to an overabundance of diverging theories and an absence of data-driven theories. Using robotic technology, we achieved specific bodily conflicts and induced predictable changes in a fundamental aspect of self-consciousness by altering where healthy subjects experienced...
heiDOK (Heidelberg University)
2010
Valdas Noreika, Jennifer Windt, Bigna Lenggenhager et al.
54 citations
The neural mechanisms underlying lucid dreaming have recently been investigated using brain imaging techniques such as electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging, which produce insightful but merely correlative results. We propose that research on the neurophysiology of lucid dreaming, for instance concerning the exact relationship between the dorsolateral prefrontal...
Science (New York, N.Y.)
August 24, 2007
Bigna Lenggenhager, Tej Tadi, Thomas Metzinger et al.
Humans normally experience the conscious self as localized within their bodily borders. This spatial unity may break down in certain neurological conditions such as out-of-body experiences, leading to a striking disturbance of bodily self-consciousness. On the basis of these clinical data, we designed an experiment that uses conflicting visual-somatosensory input in virtual reality to disrupt...
Reviews in the Neurosciences
2006
B Lenggenhager, S T Smith, O Blanke
Embodiment, the sense of being localized within one's physical body, is a fundamental aspect of the self. Recent research shows that self and body processing as well as embodiment require distinct brain mechanisms. Here, we review recent clinical and neuroimaging research on multisensory perception and integration as well as mental imagery, pointing out their importance for the coding of...
George Fejer, Till Holzapfel, Taru Hirvonen et al.
preprint
Abstract Breath-based interactions in virtual reality typically map breathing onto discrete visual objects or physiological proxies. Viscereality instead translates respiratory state into a surrounding particle field, mapping lung volume onto external space so that inhalation expands the environment and exhalation contracts it. Because particle fields have no fixed boundary, they can convey...