Does Nice or Nasty Matter? The Intensity of Touch Modulates the Rubber Hand Illusion.

ABSTRACT: Our sense of body ownership results from the ongoing integration of perceptual information coming from the different senses (i.e., multisensory integration). The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) has been extensively studied to investigate the malleability of body ownership through contrasting multisensory information. Indeed, during the RHI, stroking a visible rubber hand synchronously to participants' hand hidden from sight generates the illusion of ownership of the rubber hand (embodiment) and the mis-location of participants' hand as closer to the rubber hand (proprioceptive drift). It is well known that the RHI is optimally evoked by a pleasant stroking (affective) touch, but what of an unpleasant (painful) stroking touch - does hedonic valence matter? To this aim, participants repeated the

SUBMITTER: Della Longa L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9234571 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature