Rubber hands feel touch, but not in blind individuals.

PloS One
Valeria I PetkovaH Henrik Ehrsson

Abstract

Psychology and neuroscience have a long-standing tradition of studying blind individuals to investigate how visual experience shapes perception of the external world. Here, we study how blind people experience their own body by exposing them to a multisensory body illusion: the somatic rubber hand illusion. In this illusion, healthy blindfolded participants experience that they are touching their own right hand with their left index finger, when in fact they are touching a rubber hand with their left index finger while the experimenter touches their right hand in a synchronized manner (Ehrsson et al. 2005). We compared the strength of this illusion in a group of blind individuals (n = 10), all of whom had experienced severe visual impairment or complete blindness from birth, and a group of age-matched blindfolded sighted participants (n = 12). The illusion was quantified subjectively using questionnaires and behaviorally by asking participants to point to the felt location of the right hand. The results showed that the sighted participants experienced a strong illusion, whereas the blind participants experienced no illusion at all, a difference that was evident in both tests employed. A further experiment testing the participan...Continue Reading

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Citations

Apr 5, 2014·PloS One·Polona PozegOlaf Blanke
Sep 26, 2013·The Journal of Physiology·Martin E HérouxSimon C Gandevia
Nov 26, 2015·Neuroscience Research·Laura Aymerich-Franch, Gowrishankar Ganesh
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Jul 6, 2014·Frontiers in Human Neuroscience·Kenri Kodaka, Yuki Ishihara
Jan 13, 2017·Psychological Science·Elena NavaChiara Turati
Apr 21, 2018·Scientific Reports·Dominika Radziun, H Henrik Ehrsson
Jul 10, 2019·The European Journal of Neuroscience·Davide Bono, Patrick Haggard
Oct 10, 2019·Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture·Adrian StelmasiakBrygida Kruziñska
Jan 11, 2020·Frontiers in Neuroscience·Aubrie SchettlerMichael L Anderson
Oct 12, 2019·Schizophrenia Bulletin·Thomas A Pollak, Philip R Corlett

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