Abstract
Evidence from past research suggests that behaviours and characteristics related to body dissatisfaction may be associated with greater instability of perceptual body image, possibly due to problems in the integration of body-related multisensory information. We investigated whether people with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a condition characterised by body image disturbances, demonstrated enhanced susceptibility to the rubber hand illusion (RHI), which arises as a result of multisensory integration processes when a rubber hand and the participant's hidden real hand are stimulated in synchrony. Overall, differences in RHI experience between the BDD group and healthy and schizophrenia control groups (n = 17 in each) were not significant. RHI strength, however, was positively associated with body dissatisfaction and related tendencies. For the healthy control group, proprioceptive drift towards the rubber hand was observed following synchronous but not asynchronous stimulation, a typical pattern when inducing the RHI. Similar drifts in proprioceptive awareness occurred for the BDD group irrespective of whether stimulation was synchronous or not. These results are discussed in terms of possible abnormalities in visual processing and multisensory integration among people with BDD.
Highlights
The rubber hand illusion (RHI), first described by Botvinick and Cohen [1], occurs when a participant’s hand is rested on a surface and hidden from view, and a fake hand is placed in view, alongside the real hand
The results do not support our prediction of a stronger illusion experience, on average, among the body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) group than the healthy control group (HC) group
Observe moderate and significant positive correlations between selfreported RHI strength and variables relating to BDD-relevant symptoms and traits
Summary
The rubber hand illusion (RHI), first described by Botvinick and Cohen [1], occurs when a participant’s hand is rested on a surface and hidden from view, and a fake hand is placed in view, alongside the real hand. While top-down factors, such as the plausibility of the physical characteristics and positioning of the fake hand, may modulate the vividness of the RHI experience [2], the RHI is thought to arise predominantly as a result of the interaction of a number of related sensory processes. These processes include visual capture, multisensory integration, and sensory processing mechanisms specific to the area of space closely surrounding the body, known as peripersonal space [1,3,4,5,6,7,8]. A growing body of research indicates that sensory events within peripersonal space are responded to by specialised neurons capable of multimodal sensory processing, a capability which is thought to facilitate the integration of information from different senses [9,10], and be crucial to formulating and maintaining a perceptual representation of the body [5]
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