The rubber hand illusion increases histamine reactivity in the real arm

Abstract

Brower and others have argued that the evolution of mankind might have come to a halt without optimistic illusions. With the emergence of conscious foresight (the ability to imagine one's future) came the devastating understanding that old age, sickness, decline of mental power, and oblivion await. Varki and Brower reason that this awareness on its own would have interfered with our daily function, bringing the activities needed for survival to a stop. However, if conscious foresight evolved alongside optimistic illusions, it would not have become an evolutionary psychological barrier. ConclusionResearch on the optimism bias suggests an important divergence from classic approaches to understanding mind and behaviour. It highlights the possibility that the mind has evolved learning mechanisms to mis-predict future occurrences, as in some cases they lead to better outcomes than do unbiased beliefs. Further readingChang, E.C.

A preliminary investigation into psychophysiological effects of threatening a perceptually embodied rubber hand in healthy human participants

“…Skin conductance response increased in the phases leading up to perceptual embodiment, consistent with other investigations and reflecting general physiological arousal [12,23,24]. The phases leading up to perceptual embodiment have also been associated with various physiological correlates including proprioceptive drift [25], local skin cooling [26,27], local histamine reactivity [28] and alterations of neural activity in the brain [29], although confounding variables reduce the reliability of these correlates as indicators of the subjective experience of the sense of self and body ownership [30,31].…”

Anatomically plausible illusory posture affects mental rotation of body parts

“…The present data are thus compatible with previous accounts of a weak link between proprioceptive drift and selfattribution (i.e., Makin et al, 2008), suggesting that these measures concern related but distinct mechanisms. The changes in body ownership induced by the RHI have been quantified by a wide range of implicit measurements, including skin conductance (Armel & Ramachandran, 2003), cooling of skin temperature (Moseley et al, 2008), visuotactile perception (Aspell, Lenggenhager, & Blanke, 2009;Zopf, Savage, & Williams, 2010), changes in heartbeat frequency (Tsakiris, Tajadura-Jimenez, & Costantini, 2011), and histamine reactivity (Barnsley et al, 2011). Based on our results showing changes in MR performance under conditions that also induced changes in body ownership, we propose that (1) MR and the RHI share sensory-motor and multisensory mechanisms and (2) the speed of MR-and in particular, the magnitude of the interaction between the direction of MR and the stimulus view-should be added to the list of behavioral measures of the RHI.…”

Measuring the Effects through Time of the Influence of Visuomotor and Visuotactile Synchronous Stimulation on a Virtual Body Ownership Illusion

“…It has been suggested that a threat to the rubber hand can cause a similar level of activity in the brain areas associated with anxiety as when the person's real hand is threatened (Ehrsson, Wiech, Weiskopf, Dolan, & Passingham, 2007). The physiological signals that are usually recorded are skin conductance (Armel & Ramachandran, 2003;Honma, Koyama, & Osada, 2009;Petkova & Ehrsson, 2008;Petkova et al, 2011;Yuan & Steed, 2010), electrocardiogram (ECG) (Maselli & Slater, 2013;Slater et al, 2010), changes in temperature (Hohwy & Paton, 2010;Moseley et al, 2008), temperature sensitivity threshold (Llobera, Sanchez-Vives, & Slater, 2013), and histamine reactivity (Barnsley et al, 2011).…”