The Role of Thermal Efficiency in Body Ownership: A Cold Exposure Study

The sense of body ownership, the experience of the body as belonging to oneself, emerges from the multisensory integration of body signals. Both experimentally and clinically induced alterations in body ownership are associated with changes in skin temperature, pointing to a potential link between thermosensory processing and sense of body ownership. Whether these changes in skin temperature reflect a subsequent byproduct of ownership modulation or instead actively contribute to the maintenance and potential alterations of body ownership remains an open question. The present study investigated whether differences in thermal efficiency after a cold exposure are associated with varying levels of body ownership. A total of 36 healthy male participants underwent a Cold Exposure Test (CET), involving the immersion of both hands in 10 ºC water for 3 minutes. Skin temperature recovery was monitored through infrared thermography measurements, and participants were categorized into faster and slower rewarming phenotypes based on their post-cold recovery trajectory. Explicit body ownership was assessed through self-report questionnaires; implicit self-body associations were measured using an Implicit Association Test (IAT). Slower rewarmers exhibited higher susceptibility in body ownership to cold exposure and a weaker implicit self-body associations compared to faster rewarmers. These findings suggest that individual differences in skin temperature recovery are associated to both implicit and explicit dimensions of body ownership, supporting the hypothesis that physiological mechanisms involved in skin temperature regulation could actively contribute to bodily self- awareness, extending beyond their primary physiological role. Keywords: body ownership, skin temperature, thermal recovery, cold exposure test, homeostasis