Multisensory Integration in Body Representation

To be aware of and to move one’s body, the brain must maintain a coherent representation of the body. While the body and the brain are connected by dense ascending and descending sensory and motor pathways, representation of the body is not hardwired. This is demonstrated by the well-known rubber hand illusion in which a visible fake hand is erroneously felt as one’s own hand when it is stroked in synchrony with the viewer’s unseen actual hand. Thus, body representation in the brain is not mere maps of tactile and proprioceptive inputs, but a construct resulting from the interpretation and integration of inputs across sensory modalities.