When an event, such as the death of someone close, affects you in a major way, a common idiom says the event “really hits you where you live.”

But where, exactly, do you live? Not in a country, state, city, house, or apartment, but inside your body?

Until recently, I assumed everyone was like me, localizing “self” inside the head.

The brain has no proprioceptors or other sensory receptors to locate itself within the body, as every other part of the body does, but research on the physical locus of self reveals that most people are like me, placing their sense of self somewhere in their head, often behind the eyes [1].

Perhaps most people, believing their thoughts originate in their brains, unconsciously locate themselves in the head. Or maybe people identify most with their head-borne senses of vision and hearing. Or perhaps some of us live in our heads for both reasons.

It turns out, though, that not everyone “lives” in their heads. A minority place themselves in their chest cavity, often near the heart, while a smaller number perceive themselves to be distributed across their whole body [1-3]. Still others, such as those suffering depression or depersonalization disorder, do not feel physically connected to their bodies at all [4]

For those who do localize “self” within their body, localization is most often........

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