TY - JOUR
T1 - Hands only illusion
T2 - Multisensory integration elicits sense of ownership for body parts but not for non-corporeal objects
AU - Tsakiris, Manos
AU - Carpenter, Lewis
AU - James, Dafydd
AU - Fotopoulou, Aikaterini
PY - 2010/7/1
Y1 - 2010/7/1
N2 - The experience of body ownership can be successfully manipulated during the rubber hand illusion using synchronous multisensory stimulation. The hypothesis that multisensory integration is both a necessary and sufficient condition for body ownership is debated. We systematically varied the appearance of the object that was stimulated in synchrony or asynchrony with the participant's hand. A viewed object that was transformed in three stages from a plain wooden block to a wooden hand was compared to a realistic rubber hand. Introspective and behavioural results show that participants experience a sense of ownership only for the realistic prosthetic hand, suggesting that not all objects can be experienced as part of one's body. Instead, the viewed object must fit with a reference model of the body that contains important structural information about body parts. This body model can distinguish between corporeal and non-corporeal objects, and it therefore plays a critical role in maintaining a coherent sense of one's body.
AB - The experience of body ownership can be successfully manipulated during the rubber hand illusion using synchronous multisensory stimulation. The hypothesis that multisensory integration is both a necessary and sufficient condition for body ownership is debated. We systematically varied the appearance of the object that was stimulated in synchrony or asynchrony with the participant's hand. A viewed object that was transformed in three stages from a plain wooden block to a wooden hand was compared to a realistic rubber hand. Introspective and behavioural results show that participants experience a sense of ownership only for the realistic prosthetic hand, suggesting that not all objects can be experienced as part of one's body. Instead, the viewed object must fit with a reference model of the body that contains important structural information about body parts. This body model can distinguish between corporeal and non-corporeal objects, and it therefore plays a critical role in maintaining a coherent sense of one's body.
KW - Body model
KW - Body ownership
KW - Body representations
KW - Multisensory integration
KW - Rubber hand illusion
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77958173046&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s00221-009-2039-3
DO - 10.1007/s00221-009-2039-3
M3 - Article
C2 - 19820918
AN - SCOPUS:77958173046
SN - 0014-4819
VL - 204
SP - 343
EP - 352
JO - Experimental Brain Research
JF - Experimental Brain Research
IS - 3
ER -