Despite the fact that the rubber hand illusion (RHI) is an experimental paradigm that has been widely used in the last 14 years to investigate different aspects of the sense of bodily self, very few studies have sought to investigate the subjective nature of the experience that the RHI evokes. The present study investigates the phenomenology of the RHI through a specific elicitation method. More particularly, this study aims at assessing whether the conditions usually used as control in the RHI have an impact in the sense of body ownership and at determining whether there are different stages in the emergence of the illusion. The results indicate that far from being “all or nothing,” the illusion induced by the RHI protocol involves nuances in the type of perceptual changes that it creates. These perceptual changes affect not only the participants' perception of the rubber hand but also the perception of their real hand. In addition, perceptual effects may vary greatly between participants and, importantly, they evolve over time.

This review article addresses the relationship between chronic pain and body awareness. Chronic pain refers to an ensemble of pain conditions whose common characteristic is the fact that peripheral lesions cannot explain the duration and intensity of the pain. The lack of explanation in terms of peripheral damage has led researchers to assume that the central nervous system plays a crucial role in these conditions. In particular, one suggestion about how such central factors might operate is by influencing patients’ body awareness. In the first part of this article I present evidence showing a bidirectional relationship between chronic pain and what might be called ‘exteroceptive’ body awareness, as well as the related hypothesis that pain results from a disruption in the mechanisms underlying exteroceptive body awareness. Next, I discuss some issues that this hypothesis fails to explain, and I consider the relationship between chronic pain and the autonomic nervous system. Finally, I relate this latter relationship to the notion of ‘interoceptive’ body awareness, and explore the idea that understanding the mechanisms that relate exteroceptive and interoceptive aspects of body awareness might shed light on the nature and development of chronic pain