Age-related changes in the sense of body ownership: New insights from the rubber hand illusion

How do age-related changes affect the sense of body ownership? This study tackles this issue by means of the rubber hand illusion (RHI), a widely used experimental tool for investigating the sense of body ownership. There is ample literature on the RHI in young populations, but research on age-related changes in the RHI is still scarce. Here we extend the use of the RHI to examine the changes in the sense of body ownership related to healthy aging. Subjective reports (i.e., questionnaire) and proprioceptive drift were compared among young (n = 22, age range 20-22 years), middle-aged (n = 22, age range 44-55 years), and older adults (n = 22, age range 60-72 years). A stronger subjective experience of illusion was observed in the young and older adults as compared to the middle-aged. No differences in proprioceptive drift were found between the three groups. These findings are discussed in relation to: 1) different stages of development of perceptual and cognitive components of the sense of body ownership, and 2) compensatory mechanisms

Self-body recognition and attitudes towards body image in younger and older women

Despite the fact that ageing causes dramatic changes in bodily appearance, little is known about how self-body recognition changes across life span. Here, we investigated whether older, compared to younger women, differed in the ability of recognising their own than other women’s body parts and whether this effect was associated to negative body image dispositions. Twenty-eight young (Mage: 25.93 years, SDage = 4.74) and 25 middle-aged (Mage: 54.36 years, SDage = 4.54) women completed an implicit task consisting of visual matching of self and others’ body parts and an explicit self–other body discrimination task. Stimuli comprised of images of body parts of the participant and of other age- and BMI-matched models, which were presented in the original size or modified to look rounder or thinner. Measures of adiposity (i.e. BMI), body image concerns and appearance-related worries for specific body parts and for the whole body were also collected. Whilst both groups showed a self-body advantage in the implicit, but not in the explicit task, the advantage was notably bigger for the younger group. However, the implicit self-advantage was higher in those middle-aged women that displayed more body image concerns and worries for specific body parts. Furthermore, the two groups were comparably less able in recognising their body parts when presented thinner as compared to rounder or in their actual size. Overall, these findings open the possibility that, as women age, their implicit self-recognition abilities may decline in association with more negative body image dispositions