Inducing illusory ownership of a virtual body

We discuss three experiments that investigate how virtual limbs and bodies can come to feel like real limbs and bodies. The fi rst experiment shows that an illusion of ownership of a virtual arm appearing to project out of a person"s shoulder can be produced by tactile stimulation on a person&q...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Slater, Mel, Perez-Marcos, Daniel, Ehrsson, H. Henrik, Sánchez-Vives, María Victoria
Tipo de documento: artigo
Estado:Versão publicada
Data de publicação:2009
País:España
Recursos:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositório:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/49644
Acesso em linha:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/49644
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:Realitat virtual
Percepció
Il·lusions òptiques
Virtual reality
Perception
Optical illusions
Descrição
Resumo:We discuss three experiments that investigate how virtual limbs and bodies can come to feel like real limbs and bodies. The fi rst experiment shows that an illusion of ownership of a virtual arm appearing to project out of a person"s shoulder can be produced by tactile stimulation on a person"s hidden real hand and synchronous stimulation on the seen virtual hand. The second shows that the illusion can be produced by synchronous movement of the person"s hidden real hand and a virtual hand. The third shows that a weaker form of the illusion can be produced when a brain-computer interface is employed to move the virtual hand by means of motor imagery without any tactile stimulation. We discuss related studies that indicate that the ownership illusion may be generated for an entire body. This has important implications for the scientific understanding of body ownership and several practical applications.