Facultat de Psicologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Campus de Mundet - Edifici Teatre, Passeig de la Vall d'Hebron 171, Barcelona 08035, Spain.
J R Soc Interface. 2013 May 29;10(85):20130300. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2013.0300. Print 2013 Aug 6.
In the rubber hand illusion, tactile stimulation seen on a rubber hand, that is synchronous with tactile stimulation felt on the hidden real hand, can lead to an illusion of ownership over the rubber hand. This illusion has been shown to produce a temperature decrease in the hidden hand, suggesting that such illusory ownership produces disownership of the real hand. Here, we apply immersive virtual reality (VR) to experimentally investigate this with respect to sensitivity to temperature change. Forty participants experienced immersion in a VR with a virtual body (VB) seen from a first-person perspective. For half the participants, the VB was consistent in posture and movement with their own body, and in the other half, there was inconsistency. Temperature sensitivity on the palm of the hand was measured before and during the virtual experience. The results show that temperature sensitivity decreased in the consistent compared with the inconsistent condition. Moreover, the change in sensitivity was significantly correlated with the subjective illusion of virtual arm ownership but modulated by the illusion of ownership over the full VB. This suggests that a full body ownership illusion results in a unification of the virtual and real bodies into one overall entity-with proprioception and tactile sensations on the real body integrated with the visual presence of the VB. The results are interpreted in the framework of a 'body matrix' recently introduced into the literature.
在橡胶手错觉中，当橡胶手上的触觉刺激与隐藏的真实手上的触觉刺激同步时，会导致对橡胶手的错觉所有权。这种错觉已被证明会导致隐藏手上的温度下降，这表明这种虚幻的所有权会导致对真实手的否认。在这里，我们应用沉浸式虚拟现实 (VR) 来对此进行实验研究，以研究其对温度变化的敏感性。40 名参与者从第一人称视角体验了 VR 中的沉浸式环境，其中一半参与者的 VB 与他们自己的身体在姿势和运动上保持一致，另一半则不一致。在虚拟体验之前和期间，测量了手掌上的温度敏感性。结果表明，在一致性条件下，温度敏感性降低。此外，敏感性的变化与虚拟手臂所有权的主观错觉显著相关，但受到对整个 VB 的所有权错觉的调节。这表明，一个完整的身体所有权错觉会将虚拟和真实身体统一成一个整体实体，将真实身体的本体感受和触觉感觉与 VB 的视觉存在结合在一起。该结果是在文献中最近引入的“身体矩阵”框架内解释的。
