We rely on our senses to perceive ourselves and other objects in the world. We must always regard other objects from a third-person perspective. However, as I explain in Beyond Words, “we can combine objective and subjective perspectives when we consider our own bodies.” This is due to dedicated sensory systems that provide information about one’s own body that is not directly available for other objects.
Nevertheless, the soma can be confused. Out-of-body experiences, in which people report leaving their physical body and looking down on it from above, are the most widely-experienced forms of somatic misperceptions. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Anil Ananthaswamy, neuroscientists have become interested in these instances when we aren’t anchored in our physical bodies but seem to be standing outside, observing ourselves from a third-person point of view. And they have been able to create somatic confusions experimentally.
The brain relies on multiple sensations, both from the outside and the inside of the body, to construct a map of the body and its parts. These maps are what we perceived as our physical selves.
Conflicting sensations can disturb these maps. For example, in one study, the experimenter stroked the subject’s hand with a brush while brushing a rubber hand simultaneously. The subject could not see his own hand, only the rubber hand. In a few moments, the subject reported feeling the brush on the rubber hand. The conflicting perceptions of vision and touch altered the body map, so that the subject’s brain took ownership of the rubber hand.
As Ananthaswamy notes, the experimental creation of somatic illusions does not make a case for mind/body dualism. Rather, this research that “the sense of bodily self is something that is constructed by the brain moment by moment.”
Ananthaswamy continues: “Our sense of self arises from a complex interaction among brain, body, mind, and culture – and in the full-blown selves we are, all aspects of the self interact with and influence one another. But it all begins with the body.”
Or, we could say, the soma.