Abstract:

Enfacement illusion is a subjective experience evoked by synchronous, but not asynchronous, interpersonal multisensory stimulation (IMS) between one’s own and other persons’ face. Since 2008, when Tsakiris first reported enfacement illusion, researchers began to use various stimulus to examine people’s experience and behavioral reaction. The age, gender and internal sensitivity had significant influence on the strength of illusional experience. Moreover, activities in the right temporo-parietal junction, intraparietal sulcus, and inferior occipital gyrus had significant correlation with the self-reported strength of the illusory experience. Research findings in enfacement illusion will be valuable for not only the research in multimodal biometrics, but also the research in cognitive reconstruction. Practical implications of the research in enfacement illusion include helping those who with facial damage or experienced plastic cosmetology surgeries to establish new self-face identification. In the future, new techniques should be applied in this field to improve the process of stimulus presentation. Meanwhile, participants from various populations should be involved to improve the research validity.

Key words: vision, touch, enfacement illusion, multisensory integration, self-face representation