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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 31, 2026

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

Published on: March 1, 2017

Embodying the other using the sixth finger illusion.

Holly Blood¹, Denise Cadete¹, Matthew R Longo¹

¹School of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, UK.

|May 29, 2026

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

People can embody someone else's finger as their own extra digit, even when it's anatomically different. This research explores the flexible nature of body representation and the self-other boundary.

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Last Updated: May 31, 2026

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Psychology
Body Ownership

Background:

Embodying additional body parts is possible, as shown by the sixth finger illusion.
Previous research has not clarified the extent to which external body parts can be incorporated into one's own body representation.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if an extra finger belonging to another person can be embodied.
To explore the malleability of body representation by blurring self-other boundaries.

Main Methods:

Utilized a real-life volunteer's finger instead of virtual reality or prosthetics.
Tested two conditions: 'the Other' (volunteer's finger palm-down) and 'the Other Upwards' (volunteer's finger palm-up).
Applied principles of the sixth finger illusion with conflicting visuo-tactile stimulation.

Main Results:

Participants reported strong feelings of body ownership over the volunteer's finger in both experimental conditions.
Demonstrated embodiment of an external finger as an additional digit on the hand.
Showed that embodiment is possible even with anatomically incongruent body parts.

Conclusions:

The human capacity for embodiment extends to incorporating another person's body part.
Body representation is highly flexible, allowing for the integration of external body parts without disembodying existing ones.
This paradigm offers novel insights into the self-other boundary and embodiment processes.