Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany.
PLoS One. 2013;8(1):e52768. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0052768. Epub 2013 Jan 2.
Recent studies have shown that the feeling of body ownership can be fooled by simple visuo-tactile manipulations. Perceptual illusions have been reported in which participants sense phantom touch seen on a rubber hand (rubber hand illusion). While previous studies used homologous limbs for those experiments, we here examined an illusion where people feel phantom touch on a left rubber hand when they see it brushed simultaneously with brushes applied to their right hand. Thus, we investigated a referral of touch from the right to the left hand (across the body midline). Since it is known from animal studies that tactile illusions may alter early sensory processing, we expected a modulation of the primary somatosensory cortex (SI) corresponding to this illusion. Neuromagnetic source imaging of the functional topographic organization in SI showed a shift in left SI, associated with the strength of the referral of touch. Hence, we argue that SI seems to be closely associated with this perceptual illusion. The results suggest that the transfer of tactile information across the body midline could be mediated by neurons with bilateral tactile receptive fields (most likely BA2).
最近的研究表明，身体所有权的感觉可以通过简单的视触觉操作来欺骗。已经报道了感知错觉，其中参与者在橡胶手上感觉到幻影触摸（橡胶手错觉）。虽然以前的研究在那些实验中使用同源肢体，但我们在这里研究了一种错觉，即当人们看到左手同时被刷子刷到时，他们会感觉到左手有幻影触摸。因此，我们研究了从右手到左手的触觉（跨越身体中线）的转移。由于动物研究表明，触觉错觉可能会改变早期的感觉处理，我们预计这种错觉会对应地调制初级体感皮层（SI）。对 SI 中功能拓扑组织的神经磁源成像显示，与触觉转移强度相对应的左侧 SI 发生了移位。因此，我们认为 SI 似乎与这种感知错觉密切相关。研究结果表明，触觉信息可以通过具有双侧触觉感受野的神经元（很可能是 BA2）在身体中线进行传递。
