Bodily Self-Perception During Vestibular Galvanic Stimulation in Virtual Reality: A Replication and Extension of Karnath et al. (2019)
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: One of the less explored functions of the human vestibular system is its contribution to bodily self-perception. The continuous integration of vestibular and other sensory information is assumed to build the foundation for perceiving one’s body size and shape. The present study aims to replicate and extend findings from Karnath et al. (2019) 1 regarding the modification of bodily self-perception through bilateral galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS). Twenty healthy participants took part in a virtual reality (VR) setup with a semi-personalized avatar (i.e., self-adjusted arm length) during GVS to assess the effects of DC-and AC-GVS on bodily self-percepton. A repeated measures ANOVA revealed that neither GVS type or intensity had a significant effect on perceived arm size, successfully replicating the findings from Karnath et al. (2019) 1. However, we could not replicate the effect of body side found in the original study. The findings suggest that GVS does not modulate perceived arm size.
Source: Research Square
Institutions: University of Bern, UniDistance Suisse, University of Lucerne
Language: English
Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204094453