Three Trainable Components of Body Representation: Evidence from a Decade of Naturalistic Perceptual Skills Training
Abstract
Section titled “Abstract”Three Trainable Components of Body Representation: Evidence from a Decade of Naturalistic Perceptual Skills Training
Background. Body awareness frameworks developed for clinical and well-being contexts (e.g., Mehling et al., 2009) predominantly assess interoceptive awareness (Price et al., 2018) and its relationship to stress and emotional regulation. While valuable for therapeutic applications, these frameworks conflate dimensions of body representation that are functionally and neurally distinct, and do not address somatosensory discrimination capacities relevant to motor learning. We propose a complementary framework grounded in movement pedagogy, identifying three trainable components of body representation with distinct neural substrates.
Methods. The proposed framework was developed from the naturalistic study of Baseworks — a movement methodology that underwent approximately ten years of iterative refinement in a studio context with over 10,000 learners across diverse populations, optimizing for a single constraint: communicability — the reliability with which movement instructions produce the intended movement in a diverse learner. Systematic observation, textual analysis of movement instructions, and learner feedback (n=61 text-based; n=25 interviews) were used to formalize the resulting framework.
Findings. Communicability failures consistently clustered around three separable perceptual bottlenecks, each addressed by a distinct set of training principles. (1) Localized proprioceptive awareness — conscious detection of spatially specific sensations arising from muscle activation, hypothesized to reflect fusimotor reafference (Luu et al., 2011); large individual variation was confirmed in a survey of non-practitioners (n=36). (2) Spatial awareness — the capacity to encode, maintain, and reproduce body configurations without visual feedback, mapping onto the central memory mechanism recently identified in repositioning tasks (Proske & Weber, 2026) rather than peripheral spindle-mediated position sense; predictable failure patterns in naive learners suggest this is systematically undertrained in healthy populations. (3) Interoceptive awareness — self-regulatory monitoring of breathing and load, supporting conditions for sensory discrimination in our framework. Structured training addressing each bottleneck produced reported and observable improvements across all three dimensions.
Implications. In clinical populations, body representation breaks down through damage or disorder. In healthy but untrained populations, it is not broken — it is underdeveloped, in ways that are invisible until a training context makes the failure legible. We propose that these three components are experimentally dissociable, differentially trainable, and collectively constitute a more actionable model of body representation for research in healthy populations and potential clinical translation.
References:
Mehling WE, Gopisetty V, Daubenmier J, Price CJ, Hecht FM, Stewart A. Body awareness: construct and self-report measures. PloS one. 2009 May 19;4(5):e5614.
Price CJ, Hooven C. Interoceptive awareness skills for emotion regulation: Theory and approach of mindful awareness in body-oriented therapy (MABT). Frontiers in psychology. 2018 May 28;9:335233.
Luu BL, Day BL, Cole JD, Fitzpatrick RC. The fusimotor and reafferent origin of the sense of force and weight. J Physiol. 2011;589(13):3135-3147.
Proske U, Weber BM. Measures of human position sense do not always include contributions from peripheral sensory receptors. Eur J Neurosci. 2026;63:e70444.
Conference Overview
Section titled “Conference Overview”Location: Padua, Italy
Dates: June 8-9, 2026
URL: https://bodyrepresentation.wixsite.com/brnet/about-1-1
To interact with the world, we rely on representations of our own body. But what happens when this sense becomes distorted or unfamiliar? Altered body representations are a hallmark of several neuropsychiatric conditions, raising profound questions about the mechanisms that shape bodily self-consciousness and the boundaries between self and other.
For the 8th Annual BRNet Meeting, we will explore these questions under the theme “The Uncanny Body.” This meeting will bring together researchers and clinicians to discuss how disruptions in body perception emerge, what they reveal about the mind, and how tools and methods assessing body representation, whether in clinical populations or healthy individuals, can inform new therapeutic approaches.
🔍 Topics include:
• Body representation distortions in psychiatric conditions (e.g., eating disorders and related syndromes)
• Methods to assess body representation, from behavioural paradigms to neuroimaging and virtual reality
• Altered body perception in neurological disorders and conditions affecting bodily awareness
🎤 Confirmed keynote speakers:
Olaf Blanke (EPFL, Geneva)
Michela Bassolino (HES-SO Valais Wallis, Sion)
Jamie Feusner (University of Toronto)
📌 Important dates:
🗓 Poster submission deadline: 6 March 2026
🗓 Registration deadline: 30 March 2026
🎯 Abstract submission & registration
Submit your poster and register via the link below:
📍 Location: Padua, Italy
We look forward to welcoming you to Padua for an exciting journey into one of the most intriguing aspects of human experience - when the body becomes uncanny.
Asia’s edit entry link: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/0/d/e/1FAIpQLSdjTqkJ-rG8XyZWsOvxTcY3sMxkLsuOseWGpHvCvRu8Q4c4tQ/viewform?pli=1&pli=1&usp=form_confirm&edit2=2_ABaOnueEp4H8SGg155R4pxOwDxB0S29DeIcP-YuC2oDkqXuSKVNmd87W6ICoJTrUwIrwvoM