Double body effect induced by integrating proprioceptive-vestibular and visual information.
iScience November 21, 2025 Caleb Liang, Wen-Hsiang Lin, Wei-Kai Liou et al.
Healthy participants in virtual reality can experience owning and being located in two bodies simultaneously, a phenomenon called the Double Body Effect. In the experiments, participants wobbled involuntarily while watching two identical avatars performing the same movements. This effect occurred whether the avatars were seen from a first-person or third-person perspective. The findings indicate that body ownership and body location are more flexible than previously thought, and that self-location and body-location are distinct experiences. The results also suggest that the relationship between self and body is more complex than traditional dualism or contemporary reductionism, and may provide a preliminary model for understanding the puzzling experience of heautoscopy.