BDD-VITAC

Some people perceive certain parts of their body or appearance as ugly or flawed, while others do not recognise these perceived flaws, or only to a very limited extent. When concerns about perceived flaws become very strong and dominate a person's thoughts and behaviour, this is referred to as body dysmorphic disorder (BDD).

Due to the stark differences between self-perception and external perception, it is assumed that the representation of one's own body is distorted in the brains of people with BDD. It is already known that people with BDD have negative attitudes and feelings about their appearance. Little is known about other aspects of body representation.

In the BDD-VITAC project, we want to study people with BDD in terms of visual and tactile body representations. We want to find out which aspects of body representation are distorted and whether people with BDD differ from mentally healthy people and people with high body dissatisfaction in terms of these body representations.