The body beyond the body: expectation of a sensory event is enough to induce ownership over a fake hand

Abstract

ResearchCite this article: Ferri F, Chiarelli AM, Merla A, Gallese V, Costantini M. 2013 The body beyond the body: expectation of a sensory event is enough to induce ownership over a fake hand. Proc R Soc B 280: 20131140. http The body beyond the body: expectation of a sensory event is enough to induce ownership over a fake hand More than 100 papers have been published on the rubber hand illusion since its discovery 14 years ago. The illusion has been proposed as a demonstration that the body is distinguished from other objects by its participation in specific forms of intermodal perceptual correlation. Here, we radically challenge this view by claiming that perceptual correlation is not necessary to produce the experience of this body as mine. Each of 15 participants was seated with his/her right arm resting upon a table just below another smaller table. Thus, the real hand was hidden from the participant's view and a life-sized rubber model of a right hand was placed on the small table in front of the participant. The participant observed the experimenter's hand while approaching-without touching-the rubber hand. Phenomenology of the illusion was measured by means of skin conductance response and questionnaire. Both measures indicated that participants experienced the illusion that the experimenter's hand was about to touch their hidden hand rather than the rubber hand, as if the latter replaced their own hand. This did not occur when the rubber hand was rotated by 1808 or replaced by a piece of wood. This illusion indicates that our brain does not build a sense of self in a merely reactive way, via perceptual correlations; rather it generates predictions on what may or may not belong to itself.

Closing the Gap between the Inside and the Outside: Interoceptive Sensitivity and Social Distances

“…Indeed, it is known that anticipation of a sensory stimulus and processing of the somatosensory stimulus itself engage similar brain [67], [68] and autonomic [17] activities. Then, Pearson correlations between heartbeat perception scores and normalized RSA response to NS, IS and FS in each task were performed to assess whether interoceptive sensitivity predicts autonomic reactivity in a social situation, compared to a non-social situation, as a function of different peripersonal space distances.…”

“…In general, how interoceptive sensitivity impacts on engagement in social situations is a relevant and not yet well researched issue. An interesting question arising from previous empirical investigations [15]–[17] is, for instance, whether and what extent interoceptive sensitivity affects the representation of one's peripersonal space, as a multisensory-motor interface between body and environment, in social circumstances. The definition of peripersonal space [18], [19] originates from electrophysiological studies based on visual–tactile neurons identified in the premotor area F4 and the ventral intraparietal area (VIP) of the monkey brain [20]–[22].…”

“…We expected autonomic response to be induced as a function of interpersonal distance. This hypothesis was mainly based on our recent demonstration that expectation of being touched from a human hand, rather than the touch itself, can elicit participant's autonomic reactivity, provided that the approaching human hand entered the participant's peripersonal space [17].…”

Behavioral, Neural, and Computational Principles of Bodily Self-Consciousness

“…This result reflects an alteration of multisensory integration within the PPS due to changes in BSC. Finally, Ferri et al (2013) showed that the rubber hand illusion hand can be obtained even without touching the rubber hand by just presenting visual stimuli entering the rubber hand's PPS.…”

Psychopathology of the Bodily Self and the Brain: The Case of Schizophrenia

“…In a previous study carried out on healthy volunteers [57], participants were seated with their right arm resting upon a table just below another smaller table. Thus, the real hand was hidden from the participant's view and a life-sized rubber model of a right hand was placed on the small table in front of the participant.…”