Bodily sensations and Anomalous Self-Experiences (BASE)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Bodily sensations and Anomalous Self Experiences
IRAS ID
274374
Contact name
Kathryn Greenwood
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Sussex
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 0 days
Research summary
Psychosis is a major mental health disorder, affecting around 1% of the general population. Many people with psychosis report experiencing anomalous self-experiences, such as feeling separate from one’s own body or the world. Anomalous self-experiences are thought to play a role in the development of other unusual experiences in psychosis, such as hallucinations or delusions.
One technique for investigating unusual experiences, such as anomalous self-experiences is by recreating them in a controlled setting. In the BASE study, we will use a virtual reality technique which causes mild feelings of a lack of body ownership. In this task, participants wear a virtual reality headset which allows participants to view their arm being stroked with a brush in real time. During the task, a short time delay is introduced to what people are seeing on the headset, so that the feeling of the brushstroke and the sight of the brushstroke are experienced separately. This delay creates temporary feelings of a lack of ownership over one’s own arm.
Temporarily recreating anomalous self-experiences in the lab is valuable for two reasons. Firstly, the technique may be appropriate for use in therapies, to give therapists an opportunity to assess and train responses to unusual experiences, which patients can then apply when having the same experiences in their daily life. Secondly, they allow the investigation of potential mechanisms which may influence these types of experiences, which can lead to more targeted treatments to address these mechanisms.
The BASE study will recruit 30 participants with psychosis and 30 participants without psychosis to determine if there are differences in how the two groups experience bodily sensations in the virtual reality task. Additional tasks will assess individual differences in the ability to detect bodily sensations, which are expected to influence anomalous self-experiences in psychosis.
REC name
London - Dulwich Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/LO/0223
Date of REC Opinion
29 Apr 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion