Experiencing the self through touch

The clearest experience of the self and its physical borders is the experience of being touched. It is also the earliest sensory experience of the self.

Touch is crucial for the sensation of having a body and for learning how to distinguish between self and other. The sense of self is disturbed in many psychiatric disorders, e.g. schizophrenia, dissociative disorders, autism, and anorexia.

In this seminar, Dr Rebecca Boehme will discuss her studies in neurotypical participants and people with psychiatric diagnoses (ADHD, autism, anorexia, schizophrenia). We use self-touch and affective touch by others during functional brain imaging to understand how we differentiate between self and other, and how dysfunctions of this process can contribute to an altered sense of self. While studies found a sharpened shelf-other-distinction in ADHD (Boehme et al., 2020), we expect to find a decreased distinction between self- and other-touch-signals in anorexia and schizophrenia (studies ongoing).

Symptoms in the self-domain are currently not the focus of available treatment options, and since seldom addressed, they often persist. Dr Boehme will propose that detailed insights into mechanisms of tactile self-other-distinction will further our understanding of how a sense of self is established and might offer innovative treatment options for the symptom domain of self-related dysfunction.