Abstract
Manipulating sensory and motor cues can cause an illusionary perception of ownership of a fake body part. Presumably, the illusion can work as long as the false body part’s position and appearance are anatomically plausible. Here, we introduce an illusion that challenges past assumptions on body ownership. We used virtual reality to switch and mirror participants’ views of their hands. When a participant moves their physical hand, they see the incongruent virtual hand moving. The result is an anatomically implausible configuration of the fake hand. Despite the hand switch, participants reported significant body ownership sensations over the virtual hands. In the first between-group experiment, we found that the strength of body ownership over the incongruent hands was similar to that of congruent hands. Whereas, in the second within-group experiment, anatomical incongruency significantly decreased body ownership. Still, participants reported significant body ownership sensations of the switched hands. Curiously, we found that perceived levels of agency mediate the effect of anatomical congruency on body ownership. These findings offer a fresh perspective on the relationship between anatomical plausibility and assumed body ownership. We propose that goal-directed and purposeful actions can override anatomical plausibility constraints and discuss this in the context of the immersive properties of virtual reality.
Highlights
Our body is the source of our experienced sensations and the target of our voluntary actions
The current study explored the anatomical plausibility constraints of body ownership illusions
In our between-group experiment, participants reported a strong sense of body ownership in the congruent condition, confirming the immersive properties of the virtual environment (Riva et al, 2007; Petkova and Ehrsson, 2008; Slater et al, 2009, 2010; Sanchez-Vives et al, 2010; Yuan and Steed, 2010; Kilteni et al, 2012; Kuliga et al, 2015; Feuchtner and Müller, 2017)
Summary
Our body is the source of our experienced sensations and the target of our voluntary actions. Synchronous stroking of a hidden hand and a visible rubber hand creates an ownership illusion of the fake hand (Botvinick and Cohen, 1998) These illusions manipulate sensory and motor cues to prompt ownership of artificial bodies, like mannequins (Botvinick and Cohen, 1998; Ehrsson et al, 2004, 2007; Tsakiris and Haggard, 2005; Tsakiris et al, 2006; Lloyd, 2007; Petkova and Ehrsson, 2008; Dummer et al, 2009; Guterstam et al, 2011; Kalckert and Ehrsson, 2012, 2014; Ide, 2013; Erro et al, 2020) or virtual avatars (Petkova and Ehrsson, 2008; Slater et al, 2009, 2010; Sanchez-Vives et al, 2010; Yuan and Steed, 2010; Kilteni et al, 2012; Won et al, 2015). They show that we can take ownership of a fake body that is in a different
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