In the rubber hand illusion (RHI), a rubber hand is felt as being part of one's body. This illusion is evoked by providing synchronous visuotactile stimulation to the fake and real hands. Asynchronous visuotactile stimulation is known not to produce such an illusion of ownership, being commonly used as the control condition. Here we explored the impact of synchronous and asynchronous visuotactile stimulation on the body image. We combined the induction of the RHI with a quantitative test for the internal representation of body metrics (i.e., the positions of key fiducial points on the body relative to each other). We found a significant recalibration of the upper/lower arm lengths following asynchronous visuotactile stimulation. In particular, we observed a selective elongation of the lower arm, a distortion typical of deafferentation. Conversely, synchronous visuotactile stimulation did not alter the estimation of the arm segments' length. Our findings are consistent with a dynamic internal representation of body image that is continuously updated based on incoming multisensory information. Furthermore, the use of asynchronous multisensory stimulation as a neutral condition should be reconsidered since it introduces changes in the body image.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2017.11.002 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Influence of interoception and body movement on the rubber hand illusion.
Front Psychol
December 2024
Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
Rubber hand illusion (RHI) refers to the illusory sense of body ownership of a fake hand, which is induced by synchronous visuotactile stimulation to the real and fake hands. A negative correlation was reported between the cardiac interoception and the strength of RHI, but the subsequent studies have been unsuccessful in replicating it. On the other hand, voluntary action is suggested to link interoception and the sense of body ownership in different situations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTactile sensitivity to softness in virtual reality can increase when visual expectation and tactile feedback contradict each other.
J Neural Eng
December 2024
Biomedical Engineering Unit, Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
. The perception of softness plays a key role in interactions with various objects, both in the real world and in virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) systems. The latter can be enriched with haptic feedback on virtual objects' softness to improve immersivity and realism.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvaluation of a New Mobile Virtual Reality Setup to Alter Pain Perception: Pilot Development and Usability Study in Healthy Participants.
JMIR Serious Games
December 2024
CORE Lab, Psychosomatic Competence Center, Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, University of Bern, Freiburgstrasse 41, Bern, 3010, Switzerland, 41 31 632 70 00.
Background: Chronic pain presents a significant treatment challenge, often leading to frustration for both patients and therapists due to the limitations of traditional methods. Research has shown that synchronous visuo-tactile stimulation, as used in the rubber hand experiment, can induce a sense of ownership over a fake body part and reduces pain perception when ownership of the fake body part is reported. The effect of the rubber hand experiment can be extended to the full body, for example, during the full-body illusion, using both visuo-tactile and cardiovisual signals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFShared body representation constraints in human and non-human primates behavior.
Cortex
December 2024
MANIBUS Lab, Psychology Department, University of Turin, Turin, Italy; Neuroscience Institute of Turin (NIT), Turin, Italy. Electronic address:
Previous studies indicated that the sense of body ownership (i.e., the feeling that our body parts belong to us; SBO) can be experimentally modulated in humans.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRescaling perceptual hand maps by visual-tactile recalibration.
Eur J Neurosci
January 2025
Cognitive Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
After concurrent visual and tactile stimuli have been presented repeatedly with a spatial offset, unisensory tactile stimuli, too, are perceived with a spatial bias towards the previously presented visual stimuli. This so-called visual-tactile ventriloquism aftereffect reflects crossmodal recalibration. As touch is intrinsically linked to body parts, we asked here whether recalibration occurs at the level of individual stimuli or at a higher, integrated, map-like level.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!