Event Abstract Back to Event Now You Feel It, Now You Don't: Investigating Illusory Tactile Sensation Kirsten J. McKenzie1*, Ellen Poliakoff1, Richard J. Brown2 and Donna M. Lloyd1 1 University of Manchester, School of Psychological Sciences, United Kingdom 2 University of Manchester, Division of Clinical Psychology, United Kingdom Somatic experience is shaped by events within the body, sensory input and various cognitive factors (e.g. memory and attention), and there are numerous clinical cases in which an individual’s somatic experience can be a misrepresentation of bodily events, such as in phantom limbs [1] or medically unexplained symptoms (MUS [2]). Evidence suggests that in normal healthy individuals, illusory sensations of touch can be induced through the simultaneous presentation of stimuli in another sensory modality, even when a tactile stimulus has not been delivered [3, 4]. Factors known to mediate visuo-tactile multi-sensory integration and top-down perceptual control are thought to underlie these illusory experiences. In two experiments, we investigated the reliability of this effect and the confidence with which people report such perceptions. It was found that participants responding with a high percentage of illusory tactile sensations in one session will do so in a second session, indicating that the tendency to report illusory sensations may be a robust phenomenon. However, illusory touch appears to be processed in a different manner to real somatic input; participants were more confident when correctly reporting tactile sensations if they were accompanied by a light, but this was not the case for illusory touch reports, and reaction times were also found to differ. A third experiment, in which the strength of the association between the two stimuli was manipulated using a training protocol prior to the task, was also conducted in order to investigate the possibility of altering the frequency of illusory sensations through prior experience. While both weak and strong association groups exhibited a higher number of illusory touch reports during light trials, individuals in the ‘strong’ group made significantly more illusory touch responses than those in the ‘weak’ group.