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When Right Feels Left: Referral of Touch and Ownership between the Hands

Feeling touch on a body part is paradigmatically considered to require stimulation of tactile afferents from the body part in question, at least in healthy non-synaesthetic individuals. In contrast to this view, we report a perceptual illusion where people experience “phantom touches” on a right rub...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Petkova, Valeria I., Ehrsson, H. Henrik
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2734169/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19742313
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006933
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author Petkova, Valeria I.
Ehrsson, H. Henrik
author_facet Petkova, Valeria I.
Ehrsson, H. Henrik
author_sort Petkova, Valeria I.
collection PubMed
description Feeling touch on a body part is paradigmatically considered to require stimulation of tactile afferents from the body part in question, at least in healthy non-synaesthetic individuals. In contrast to this view, we report a perceptual illusion where people experience “phantom touches” on a right rubber hand when they see it brushed simultaneously with brushes applied to their left hand. Such illusory duplication and transfer of touch from the left to the right hand was only elicited when a homologous (i.e., left and right) pair of hands was brushed in synchrony for an extended period of time. This stimulation caused the majority of our participants to perceive the right rubber hand as their own and to sense two distinct touches – one located on the right rubber hand and the other on their left (stimulated) hand. This effect was supported by quantitative subjective reports in the form of questionnaires, behavioral data from a task in which participants pointed to the felt location of their right hand, and physiological evidence obtained by skin conductance responses when threatening the model hand. Our findings suggest that visual information augments subthreshold somatosensory responses in the ipsilateral hemisphere, thus producing a tactile experience from the non-stimulated body part. This finding is important because it reveals a new bilateral multisensory mechanism for tactile perception and limb ownership.
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spelling pubmed-27341692009-09-09 When Right Feels Left: Referral of Touch and Ownership between the Hands Petkova, Valeria I. Ehrsson, H. Henrik PLoS One Research Article Feeling touch on a body part is paradigmatically considered to require stimulation of tactile afferents from the body part in question, at least in healthy non-synaesthetic individuals. In contrast to this view, we report a perceptual illusion where people experience “phantom touches” on a right rubber hand when they see it brushed simultaneously with brushes applied to their left hand. Such illusory duplication and transfer of touch from the left to the right hand was only elicited when a homologous (i.e., left and right) pair of hands was brushed in synchrony for an extended period of time. This stimulation caused the majority of our participants to perceive the right rubber hand as their own and to sense two distinct touches – one located on the right rubber hand and the other on their left (stimulated) hand. This effect was supported by quantitative subjective reports in the form of questionnaires, behavioral data from a task in which participants pointed to the felt location of their right hand, and physiological evidence obtained by skin conductance responses when threatening the model hand. Our findings suggest that visual information augments subthreshold somatosensory responses in the ipsilateral hemisphere, thus producing a tactile experience from the non-stimulated body part. This finding is important because it reveals a new bilateral multisensory mechanism for tactile perception and limb ownership. Public Library of Science 2009-09-09 /pmc/articles/PMC2734169/ /pubmed/19742313 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006933 Text en Petkova, Ehrsson. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Petkova, Valeria I.
Ehrsson, H. Henrik
When Right Feels Left: Referral of Touch and Ownership between the Hands
title When Right Feels Left: Referral of Touch and Ownership between the Hands
title_full When Right Feels Left: Referral of Touch and Ownership between the Hands
title_fullStr When Right Feels Left: Referral of Touch and Ownership between the Hands
title_full_unstemmed When Right Feels Left: Referral of Touch and Ownership between the Hands
title_short When Right Feels Left: Referral of Touch and Ownership between the Hands
title_sort when right feels left: referral of touch and ownership between the hands
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2734169/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19742313
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006933
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