Rubber Hand Illusion Experiment

In 1998 researchers matthew botvinick and jonathan cohen of the university of pittsburgh pa detailed an experiment that people would later refer to as the rubber hand illusion rhi.

Rubber hand illusion experiment.

Researchers in italy performed the trick on a group of. Understanding the neural underpinnings of the rubber hand illusion can also help to treat disorders where body ownership is distorted as is the case in schizophrenia. It can be induced experimentally by manipulating the visual perspective of the subject and also supplying visual and sensory signals which correlate to the subject s body. Experiments with a fake body part have revealed how the brain becomes confused during a party trick known as the rubber hand illusion.

Once the illusion had taken hold the researchers smeared fake feces on the rubber hand while simultaneously dabbing the subjects real hand hidden from view with a damp paper towel. To measure the time course of proprioceptive drift during the rubber hand. A change of perceived finger location towards the rubber hand proprioceptive drift has been reported to correlate with this illusion. Body transfer illusion is the illusion of owning either a part of a body or an entire body other than one s own thus it is sometimes referred to as body ownership in the research literature.

In these patients the illusion is stronger with faster induction and increased perceptual reports even during sensory asynchrony. In the rubber hand illusion the feeling of ownership of a rubber hand displaced from a participant s real occluded hand is evoked by synchronously stroking both hands with paintbrushes.