An immersive virtual reality system for investigating human bodily self-consciousness

In recent research on brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), motor observation is considered to become a promising methodology for the BCI neurofeedback training, because it is believed to induce stronger bodily self-consciousness such as sense of agency, or sense of ownership, and thus it can cause a reliable electroencephalogram (EEG) feature for the BCI. However the rational relationship between the motor observation and bodily self-consciousness has not yet been clarified. To investigate whether motor observation from the first person point of view can modulate bodily self-consciousness, we developed an immersive virtual reality (VR) system, and executed a psychophysical experiment using the system. Experimental results demonstrate that the developed VR system enables subjects to have stronger bodily self-consciousness. It suggests that motor observation from the first person viewpoint contributes to neurofeedback training of motor imagery-based BCI.