Feeling of hand deformation as a monkey's hand: an experiment on a visual body with discomfort and its algebraic analysis

Abstract

While there are many studies in which body ownership can be transferred to a virtual body, there are few experimental studies of how subjects feel about their own bodies being deformed since a real body cannot be deformed. Here, we propose such an experimental setup, in which a twisted hand is diagonally viewed from behind, which is called a “monkey's hand.” Although the subject cannot see the thumb hidden behind his or her arm, he or she feels that the monkey's hand has an ambiguous thumb that functionally never exists but structurally exists. This ambiguity is consistent with experimental results on proprioceptive drift, by which the deformation of the hand is measured. The ambiguity of the presence and absence of the thumb is finally analyzed with a specific algebraic structure called a lattice. This can help us understand disownership as being different from the absence of ownership.