Illusory ownership of one's younger face facilitates access to childhood episodic autobiographical memories

Autobiographical memories are memories of previous experiences of one’s self, therefore it seems likely that autobiographical memories and self-representations interact in the brain. To test this in relation to the bodily self, we investigated whether the retrieval of childhood autobiographical memories would be facilitated by an illusion of ownership for a ‘child version’ of the participant’s own face. 50 neurologically healthy adults were tested in an online enfacement illusion study. Feelings of ownership and agency for the face were greater during conditions with visuo-motor synchrony than conditions with asynchrony. Critically, participants who viewed their child-like face recollected more childhood episodic memory details than those who viewed their adult face. No effects on autobiographical semantic memory recall were found. This finding indicates that there is an interaction between the bodily self and autobiographical memory. Our experimental paradigm could in future be adapted for its potential clinical application in memory disorders.