The Rubber Hand Illusion Revisited: Visuotactile Integration and Self-Attribution.

TLDR

Watching a rubber hand stroked while one's own unseen hand is stroked synchronously can cause the rubber hand to be perceived as one's own, and a behavioral measure of the illusion is a drift of the perceived hand position toward the rubber hand. The authors aimed to examine how general body scheme representations influence the RHI and to identify the necessary conditions of visuotactile stimulation for the illusion. They conducted four experiments, manipulating body scheme representations and visuotactile synchrony to assess their effects on the RHI. Results indicate that bottom‑up visuotactile correlation is a necessary but not sufficient driver of the RHI, while top‑down body representation modulates its phenomenological experience.

Abstract

Watching a rubber hand being stroked, while one's own unseen hand is synchronously stroked, may cause the rubber hand to be attributed to one's own body, to "feel like it's my hand." A behavioral measure of the rubber hand illusion (RHI) is a drift of the perceived position of one's own hand toward the rubber hand. The authors investigated (a) the influence of general body scheme representations on the RHI in Experiments 1 and 2 and (b) the necessary conditions of visuotactile stimulation underlying the RHI in Experiments 3 and 4. Overall, the results suggest that at the level of the process underlying the build up of the RHI, bottom-up processes of visuotactile correlation drive the illusion as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition. Conversely, at the level of the phenomenological content, the illusion is modulated by top-down influences originating from the representation of one's own body.