Investigating the Effects of Tactile Masking and Surface Texture on the Velvet Hand Illusion

When we hold thin metallic bars between the palms of our hands and rub the palms against each other, the feeling of touching smooth velvet occurs. Previous studies have shown that tactile motion and pressure on the palms are important for this velvet hand illusion. Interestingly, when we experience this illusion, we cannot feel the texture of our palms as we usually do. In the present study, we investigated the possibility that tactile masking contributes to the occurrence of the velvet hand illusion. We measured vibrotactile detection performance on the palms of the hands during the occurrence of the velvet hand illusion. The detection performance was worse when the illusion occurred than when it did not. Moreover, the degradation of the detection performance correlated positively with the subjective magnitude of the illusion. We also examined whether additional surface texture could affect the occurrence of the illusion and found that the illusion became weaker as the roughness of the surface increased. These findings suggest that tactile motion and pressure information delivered by the bars of smooth surface mask tactile sensations on the palms of the hands, resulting in an illusory smooth, frictionless feeling on the palms.