Dissociations between bodily self-awareness components in women with Anorexia Nervosa

The awareness of our body arises from the convergence between physical (e.g., autonomic signals, perception of body in space) and mental (e.g., subjective sensations) components. The divergence between these components could characterise bodily self-awareness distortions that are typical of some neuropsychiatric syndromes, such as Anorexia Nervosa. We investigated this hypothesis by testing 22 women with restrictive-type AN and a matched sample of 22 healthy women with a multisensory integration paradigm. Participants underwent the Mirror Box Illusion, by which we explored three different (typically convergent) elements of bodily self-awareness: (i) the subjective experiences of embodiment, (ii) hand localisation, and (iii) the skin temperature change associated with the manipulation. In people with AN, we found an altered orchestration between skin temperature changes, explicit sensations of embodiment and proprioceptive bias. These components were modulated differently by the experimental condition compared to healthy controls. These findings suggest that targeted interventions to restore the convergence bodily self-awareness components might be beneficial in treating the self distortions associated with AN.