Ghost Sensations Across the Body: Trait and State Differences in Spontaneous Somatic Experience

When we pause and relax, strange sensations might arise; a tingling in the hand, an itch on the foot, often without any clear cause. These "ghost" bodily experiences, known as spontaneous sensations (SPS), offer a unique window into how we perceive our bodies. In an online experimental study of 175 participants, we examined how SPS differ across body regions (hands, feet, whole body) and whether individual differences in visual attention shape these experiences. We measured both the general tendency to notice SPS (SPSTrait) and in the moment awareness of them (SPSState), alongside performance on a visual Posner task of endogenous attention. SPSTrait was reported more strongly in the whole body compared to the feet, suggesting a broad, higher-order body representation. In contrast, SPSState did not vary by body part. These experiences, whether momentary i.e. SPSState or habitual i.e. SPSTrait, were unrelated to how participants performed on the visual attention task. Our findings support a representational distinction: SPSTrait may reflect somatorepresentation, a top-down, global body model, whereas SPSState may arise from bottom-up somatosensation.