Multisensory stimulation can induce an illusion of larger belly size in immersive virtual reality

Body change illusions have been of great interest in recent years for the understanding of how the brain represents the body. Appropriate multisensory stimulation can induce an illusion of ownership over a rubber or virtual arm, simple types of out-of-the-body experiences, and even ownership with respect to an alternate whole body. Here we use immersive virtual reality to investigate whether the illusion of a dramatic increase in belly size can be induced in males through (a) first person perspective position (b) synchronous visual-motor correlation between real and virtual arm movements, and (c) self-induced synchronous visual-tactile stimulation in the stomach area.

Twenty two participants entered into a virtual reality (VR) delivered through a stereo head-tracked wide field-of-view head-mounted display. They saw from a first person perspective a virtual body substituting their own that had an inflated belly. For four minutes they repeatedly prodded their real belly with a rod that had a virtual counterpart that they saw in the VR. There was a synchronous condition where their prodding movements were synchronous with what they felt and saw and an asynchronous condition where this was not the case. The experiment was repeated twice for each participant in counter-balanced order. Responses were measured by questionnaire, and also a comparison of before and after self-estimates of belly size produced by direct visual manipulation of the virtual body seen from the first person perspective.

The results show that first person perspective of a virtual body that substitutes for the own body in virtual reality, together with synchronous multisensory stimulation can temporarily produce changes in body representation towards the larger belly size. This was demonstrated by (a) questionnaire results, (b) the difference between the self-estimated belly size, judged from a first person perspective, after and before the experimental manipulation, and (c) significant positive correlations between these two measures. We discuss this result in the general context of body ownership illusions, and suggest applications including treatment for body size distortion illnesses.