Losing one's hand: visual-proprioceptive conflict affects touch perception.

ABSTRACT:

Background

While the sense of bodily ownership has now been widely investigated through the rubber hand illusion (RHI), very little is known about the sense of disownership. It has been hypothesized that the RHI also affects the ownership feelings towards the participant's own hand, as if the rubber hand replaced the participant's actual hand. Somatosensory changes observed in the participants' hand while experiencing the RHI have been taken as evidence for disownership of their real hand. Here we propose a theoretical framework to disambiguate whether such somatosensory changes are to be ascribed to the disownership of the real hand or rather to the anomalous visuo-proprioceptive conflict experienced by the participant during the RHI.

Methodology/principal findings

In exper

SUBMITTER: Folegatti A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2732904 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature