Dissociative experiences arise from disrupted multi-sensory integration

Dissociation is a transdiagnostic mental health symptom involving a sense of detachment from one’s own body. A coherent percept of our body relies upon the smooth integration of different senses, such as vision and touch, which are processed by the brain at different speeds. In a N=100 non-clinical sample, we used Virtual Reality to investigate sensory-integration by systematically lengthening a delay to an immersive visual feed on a head-mounted display, resulting in visual information being delayed relative to other senses (e.g. touch). Larger delays were associated with self-reported feelings of dis-ownership from the body, and participants with high trait dissociation were more sensitive to delay, suggesting an increased tendency to ‘fraction’ senses. Moreover, individuals with higher dissociation displayed similar cardiac reactivity to both self and other touch. These findings highlight two key mechanisms underlying dissociation; altered sensory-integration and distinct processing of self and other touch.