Game studies methodologies which focus on the visual, narrative, and semiotic content of digital games overlook the way that embodied perception and physiological response contribute to the meaningfulness of games. Gameplay also needs to be understood in terms of affective response: the embodied, multisensory perception of the game environment. Distinguishing between affect and emotion, this pa...

BACKGROUND Little work has examined the relation between interoceptive awareness and symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Existing research suggests that depressed individuals exhibit impaired heartbeat perception, though the results of this research have been equivocal. Importantly, depressed participants in these studies have had comorbid anxiety disorders, making it difficult to draw...

Bodily training typically evokes behavioral and perceptual gains, enforcing neuroplastic processes and affecting neural representations. We investigated the effect on somatosensory perception of a three-day Zen meditation exercise, a purely mental intervention. Tactile spatial discrimination of the right index finger was persistently improved by only 6 hours of mental-sensory focusing on this f...

It has been shown that dominant individuals sustain eye-contact when non-consciously confronted with angry faces, suggesting reflexive mechanisms underlying dominance behaviors. However, dominance and submission can be conveyed and provoked by means of not only facial but also bodily features. So far few studies have investigated the interplay of body postures with personality traits and behavi...

Brain imaging studies in humans have revealed the existence of a visuo-tactile system, which matches observed touch with felt touch. In this system, the primary somatosensory cortex (SI) appears to play a causal role in the visual processing of tactile events. Whether this visuo-tactile mechanism for touch in SI applies to the sight of 'any' touch, or whether it is restricted to the domain of b...

The consequences of vestibular disorders on balance, oculomotor control, and self-motion perception have been extensively described in humans and animals. More recently, vestibular disorders have been related to cognitive deficits in spatial navigation and memory tasks. Less frequently, abnormal bodily perceptions have been described in patients with vestibular disorders. Altered forms of bodil...

Vertigo can be described as an attempt to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind. Vertigo has, however, not been generally considered as a design resource and we believe it to be under-explored in the area of digital bodily play. To investigate how vertigo could be considered as a design resource in this context, we co...

The sensory information we receive from our own bodies is unique, both from epistemological and neurological points of view. Philosophers have noted the immediate, private quality of bodily sensation. I can understand your visual percepts by looking in the same direction as you, but understanding your tactile sensation would require being in your skin! Descartes took an additional step, arguing...

OBJECTIVE Interoceptive awareness is known to be impaired in eating disorders. To date, it has remained unclear whether this variable is related to the construct of interoceptive sensitivity. Interoceptive sensitivity is considered to be an essential variable in emotional processes. The objective of the study was to elucidate this potential relationship and to clarify whether general interocept...

Emotional signals are perceived whether or not we are aware of it. The evidence so far mostly came from studies with facial expressions. Here, we investigated whether the pattern of non-conscious face expression perception is found for whole body expressions. Continuous flash suppression (CFS) was used to measure the time for neutral, fearful, and angry facial or bodily expressions to break fro...