This dataset is part of an original research paper published on 23 December, 2020 in Scientific Reports. It was conducted by international PhD student Debbie M.L. de Boer at the QUT Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI) from April 26th until July 1st 2019. It investigated whether the brain’s ability to locate itself might be the key mechanism for self-identification and distinguishing self from other signals (i.e. perspective-taking).

Experimental Design

This study comprised a fully randomised, double-blind and sham-controlled high definition tDCS experiment. The experiment had a crossover, mixed factorial design with two repeated measures (i.e., sessions) on the dependent variables and one independent grouping factor with four levels (i.e., experimental conditions). In each session, healthy volunteers controlled for susceptibility factors (e.g., time Perceptual Aberration Scale, t-PAS) completed a (i) stereoscopic 3D Full-body Illusion (FBI) paradigm and (ii) a (control) Perspective Taking (PT) computer task. Half of the participants received active stimulation on Session 1 versus sham stimulation on Session 2. The FBI-paradigm had two dependent variables: (i) the pre- and posttest displacement scores (behavioral measure with two levels) and (ii) the total exit-interview scores (psychometric measure). The PT-task (composed of an OBT-task & control LAT-task) had four dependent variables with three levels: (i) mean response times and (ii) accuracy scores were calculated for each of three blocks per task. OBT = own-body transformation; LAT = lateralisation.

Statistical Analyses

The experiment had six dependent variables spread over two tasks (FBI; PT) with two repeated measures (Session 1 & 2) and one grouping variable (i.e., four experimental conditions). Each of the dependent variables (e.g., “Total Exit Interview Score”) was analyzed separately in a mixed ANOVA with one between-subjects factor (e.g., “Experimental Condition” with four levels) and one within-subjects factor (e.g., “Session” with two levels). Where appropriate, the four experimental groups were taken together creating an independent variable “Stimulation Order” with two levels: stimulation Session 1 (FBI-PT 1 & PT-FBI 1) versus stimulation Session 2 (FBI-PT 2 & PT-FBI 2). In addition, the dependent variables of the PT-task were analyzed in a one-way repeated measures MANOVA to check for task-learning effects over consecutive blocks and sessions irrespective of stimulation order. Finally, correlations between behavioural and psychometric measures (incl. a reliability check) are reported.