Antonella Maselli

The building blocks of the full body ownership illusion.

Previous work has reported that it is not difficult to give people the illusion of ownership over an artificial body, providing a powerful tool for the investigation of the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying body perception and self consciousness. We present an experimental study that uses immersive virtual reality (IVR) focused on identifying the perceptual building blocks of this illusion. We systematically manipulated visuotactile and visual sensorimotor contingencies, visual perspective, and the appearance of the virtual body in order to assess their relative role and mutual interaction. Consistent results from subjective reports and physiological measures showed that a first person perspective over a fake humanoid body is essential for eliciting a body ownership illusion. We found that the illusion of ownership can be generated when the virtual body has a realistic skin tone and spatially substitutes the real body seen from a first person perspective. In this case there is no need for an additional contribution of congruent visuotactile or sensorimotor cues. Additionally, we found that the processing of incongruent perceptual cues can be modulated by the level of the illusion: when the illusion is strong, incongruent cues are not experienced as incorrect. Participants exposed to asynchronous visuotactile stimulation can experience the ownership illusion and perceive touch as originating from an object seen to contact the virtual body. Analogously, when the level of realism of the virtual body is not high enough and/or when there is no spatial overlap between the two bodies, then the contribution of congruent multisensory and/or sensorimotor cues is required for evoking the illusion. On the basis of these results and inspired by findings from neurophysiological recordings in the monkey, we propose a model that accounts for many of the results reported in the literature.

Over my fake body: body ownership illusions for studying the multisensory basis of own-body perception

Which is my body and how do I distinguish it from the bodies of others, or from objects in the surrounding environment? The perception of our own body and more particularly our sense of body ownership is taken for granted. Nevertheless, experimental findings from body ownership illusions (BOIs), show that under specific multisensory conditions, we can experience artificial body parts or fake bodies as our own body parts or body, respectively. The aim of the present paper is to discuss how and why BOIs are induced. We review several experimental findings concerning the spatial, temporal, and semantic principles of crossmodal stimuli that have been applied to induce BOIs. On the basis of these principles, we discuss theoretical approaches concerning the underlying mechanism of BOIs. We propose a conceptualization based on Bayesian causal inference for addressing how our nervous system could infer whether an object belongs to our own body, using multisensory, sensorimotor, and semantic information, and we discuss how this can account for several experimental findings. Finally, we point to neural network models as an implementational framework within which the computational problem behind BOIs could be addressed in the future.

The effect of intergalactic helium on hydrogen reionization: implications for the sources of ionizing photons at z>6

We investigate the effect of primordial helium on hydrogen reionization using a hydrodynamical simulation combined with the cosmological radiative transfer code CRASH. The radiative transfer simulations are performed in a 35.12h −1 comoving Mpc box using a variety of assumptions for the amplitude and power-law extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) spectral index of the ionizing emissivity at z > 6. We use an empirically motivated prescription for ionizing sources which, by design, ensures all of the models are consistent with constraints on the Thomson scattering optical depth and the metagalactic hydrogen photoionization rate atz ∼ 6. The inclusion of helium slightly delays reionization due to the small number of ionizing photons which reionize neutral helium instead of hydrogen. However, helium has a significant impact on the thermal state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) during hydrogen reionization. Models with a soft EUV spectral index, α = 3, produce IGM temperatures at the mean density at z ∼ 6, T 0 � 10 500 K, which are ∼20 per cent higher compared to models in which helium photoheating is excluded. Harder EUV indices produce even larger IGM temperature boosts by the end of hydrogen reionization. A comparison of these simulations to recent observational estimates of the IGM temperature at z ∼ 5–6 suggests that hydrogen reionization was primarily driven by Population II stellar sources with a soft EUV index, α 3. We also find that faint, as yet undetected galaxies, characterized by a luminosity function with a steepening faint-end slope (αLF ≤− 2) and an increasing Lyman continuum escape fraction (f esc ∼ 0.5), are required to reproduce the ionizing emissivity used in our simulations at z > 6. Finally, we note there is some tension between recent observational constraints which indicate the IGM is >10 per cent neutral by volume z ∼ 7, and estimates of the ionizing emissivity at z = 6 which indicate only 1–3 ionizing photons are emitted per hydrogen atom over a Hubble time at z = 6. This tension may be alleviated by either a lower neutral fraction at z ∼ 7 or an IGM which still remains a few per cent neutral by volume at z = 6.

Sliding perspectives: dissociating ownership from self-location during full body illusions in virtual reality

Bodily illusions have been used to study bodily self-consciousness and disentangle its various components, among other the sense of ownership and self-location. Congruent multimodal correlations between the real body and a fake humanoid body can in fact trigger the illusion that the fake body is ones own and/or disrupt the unity between the perceived self-location and the position of the physical body. However, the extent to which changes in self-location entail changes in ownership is still matter of debate. Here we address this problem with the support of immersive virtual reality. Congruent visuotactile stimulation was delivered on healthy participants to trigger full body illusions from different visual perspectives, each resulting in a different degree of overlap between real and virtual body. Changes in ownership and self-location were measured with novel self-posture assessment tasks and with an adapted version of the cross-modal congruency task. We found that, despite their strong coupling, self-location and ownership can be selectively altered: self-location was affected when having a third person perspective over the virtual body, while ownership toward the virtual body was experienced only in the conditions with total or partial overlap. Thus, when the virtual body is seen in the far extra-personal space, changes in self-location were not coupled with changes in ownership. If a partial spatial overlap is present, ownership was instead typically experienced with a boosted change in the perceived self-location. We discussed results in the context of the current knowledge of the multisensory integration mechanisms contributing to self-body perception. We argue that changes in the perceived self-location are associated to the dynamical representation of peripersonal space encoded by visuotactile neurons. On the other hand, our results speak in favor of visuo-proprioceptive neuronal populations being a driving trigger in full body ownership illusions.

Effect of intergalactic medium on the observability of Lyα emitters during cosmic reionization

We perform a systematic study of how the inhomogeneities in the intergalactic medium (IGM) affect the observability of Lyα emitters (LAEs) around the epoch of reionization. We focus on the IGM close to the galaxies as the detailed ionization distribution and velocity fields of this region could significantly influence the scattering of Lyα photons off neutral H atoms as they traverse the IGM after escaping from the galaxy. We simulate the surface brightness (SB) maps and spectra of more than 100 LAEs at z = 7.7 as seen by an observer at z = 0. To achieve this, we extract the source properties of galaxies and their surrounding IGM from cosmological simulations of box sizes 5–30 h−1 Mpc and then follow the coupled radiative transfer of ionizing and Lyα radiation through the IGM using crashα. We find that the simulated SB profiles are extended and their detailed structure is affected by inhomogeneities in the IGM, especially at high neutral fractions. The detectability of LAEs and the fraction of the flux observed depend heavily on the shape of the SB profile and the SB threshold (SB th) of the observational campaign. Only ultradeep observations (e.g.  erg s−1 cm−2 arcsec−2) would be able to obtain the true underlying mass–luminosity relation and luminosity functions of LAEs. The details of our results depend on whether Lyα photons are significantly shifted in the galaxy to longer wavelengths, the mean ionization fraction in the IGM and the clustering of ionizing sources. These effects can lead to an easier escape of Lyα photons with less scattering in the IGM and a concentrated SB profile, similar to the one of a point source. Finally, we show that the SB profiles are steeper at high-ionization fraction for the same LAE sample which can potentially be observed from the stacked profile of a large number of LAEs.

crash3: cosmological radiative transfer through metals

Here we introduce CRASH3, the latest release of the 3D radiative transfer code CRASH. In its current implementation CRASH3 integrates into the reference algorithm the code Cloudy to evaluate the ionisation states of metals, self-consistently with the radiative transfer through H and He. The feedback of the heavy elements on the calculation of the gas temperature is also taken into account, making of CRASH3 the first 3D code for cosmological applications which treats self-consistently the radiative transfer through an inhomogeneous distribution of metal enriched gas with an arbitrary number of point sources and/or a background radiation. The code has been tested in idealized configurations, as well as in a more realistic case of multiple sources embedded in a polluted cosmic web. Through these validation tests the new method has been proven to be numerically stable and convergent. We have studied the dependence of the results on a number of physical quantities such as the source characteristics (spectral range and shape, intensity), the metal composition, the gas number density and metallicity.

Enabling parallel computing in CRASH

We present the new parallel version (pCRASH2) of the cosmological radiative transfer code CRASH2 for distributed memory supercomputing facilities. The code is based on a static domain decomposition strategy inspired by geometric dilution of photons in the optical thin case that ensures a favourable performance speed-up with increasing number of computational cores. Linear speed-up is ensured as long as the number of radiation sources is equal to the number of computational cores or larger. The propagation of rays is segmented and rays are only propagated through one subdomain per time step to guarantee an optimal balance between communication and computation. We have extensively checked pCRASH2 with a standardised set of test cases to validate the parallelisation scheme. The parallel version of CRASH2 can easily handle the propagation of radiation from a large number of sources and is ready for the extension of the ionisation network to species other than hydrogen and helium.

Galaxy formation with radiative and chemical feedback

Here we introduce GAMESH, a novel pipeline that implements self-consistent radiative and chemical feedback in a computational model of galaxy formation. By combining the cosmological chemical-evolution model GAMETE with the radiative transfer code CRASH, GAMESH can post-process realistic outputs of a N-body simulation describing the red-shift evolution of the forming galaxy. After introducing the GAMESH implementation and its features, we apply the code to a low-resolution N-body simulation of the formation of the Milky Way and we investigate the combined effects of self-consistent radiative and chemical feedback. Many physical properties, which can be directly compared with observations in the Galaxy and its surrounding satellites, are predicted by the code along with the merger-tree assembly. The resulting red-shift evolution for the Local Group of star-formation rates, reionization and metal enrichment along with the predicted metallicity distribution function of halo stars are critically compared with observations. We discuss the merits and limitations of the first release of GAMESH, which also opens new directions to a full implementation of feedback processes in galaxy-formation models by combining semi-analytic and numerical methods.

The body fades away: investigating the effects of transparency of an embodied virtual body on pain threshold and body ownership

The feeling of “ownership” over an external dummy/virtual body (or body part) has been proven to have both physiological and behavioural consequences. For instance, the vision of an “embodied” dummy or virtual body can modulate pain perception. However, the impact of partial or total invisibility of the body on physiology and behaviour has been hardly explored since it presents obvious difficulties in the real world. In this study we explored how body transparency affects both body ownership and pain threshold. By means of virtual reality, we presented healthy participants with a virtual co-located body with four different levels of transparency, while participants were tested for pain threshold by increasing ramps of heat stimulation. We found that the strength of the body ownership illusion decreases when the body gets more transparent. Nevertheless, in the conditions where the body was semi-transparent, higher levels of ownership over a see-through body resulted in an increased pain sensitivity. Virtual body ownership can be used for the development of pain management interventions. However, we demonstrate that providing invisibility of the body does not increase pain threshold. Therefore, body transparency is not a good strategy to decrease pain in clinical contexts, yet this remains to be tested.

Prospects for detecting the 21 cm forest from the diffuse intergalactic medium with LOFAR

We discuss the feasibility of the detection of the 21 cm forest in the diffuse intergalactic medium (IGM) with the radio telescope LOFAR. The optical depth to the 21 cm line has been derived using simulations of reionization which include detailed radiative transfer of ionizing photons. We find that the spectra from reionization models with similar total comoving hydrogen ionizing emissivity but different frequency distribution look remarkably similar. Thus, unless the reionization histories are very different from each other (e.g. a predominance of UV versus X-ray heating) we do not expect to distinguish them by means of observations of the 21 cm forest. Because the presence of a strong X-ray background would make the detection of the 21 cm line absorption impossible, the lack of absorption could be used as a probe of the presence/intensity of the X-ray background and the thermal history of the Universe. Along a random line of sight LOFAR could detect a global suppression of the spectrum from z greater than or similar to 12, when the IGM is still mostly neutral and cold, in contrast with the more well-defined, albeit broad, absorption features visible at lower redshift. Sharp, strong absorption features associated with rare, high-density pockets of gas could also be detected at z similar to 7 along preferential lines of sight.