Manipulating The Body Representation: Assessment Of A Novel Platform

The Rubber Hand Illusion can be used to induce the illusion that a fake hand is part of one's own body. Thus, it can be used to alter the body representation. It was also reported that the Rubber Hand Illusion induces a proprioceptive drift of one's real hand toward the fake hand. The Rubber Hand Illusion can be induced when the fake hand is placed farther in the sagittal plane (distally) compared to the real hand. In this case, the induced update of the body representation is an elongation of the arm. Virtual Reality and haptic technologies can be used to manipulate the perceived scenario in a virtual version of the Rubber Hand Illusion, the Virtual Hand Illusion. We developed a novel platform consisting in a virtual reality application integrating an optical motion capture device and haptic stimulators to study the manipulation of the body representation. We developed two experimental protocols to induce embodiment of an elongated arm: one validated in previous studies, that employs congruent visuo-motor-tactile stimulation, and one reproducing the typical Virtual Hand Illusion where only congruent visuo-tactile stimulation was employed. We tested both protocols with healthy participants.