The Rubber Hand Illusion in Healthy Younger and Older Adults

Source:Page Count 19Percepts about our body ’s position in space and about body ownership are informed by multisensory feedback from visual, proprioceptive, and tactile inputs. The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) is a multisensory illusion that is induced when an observer sees a rubber hand being stroked while they feel their own, spatially disp laced, and obstructed hand being stroked. When temporally synchronous, the visual–tactile interactions can create the illusion that the rubber hand belongs to the observer and that the observer’s real hand is shifted in position towards the rubber hand. Importantly, little is understood about wh ether these multisensory perceptions of the body change with older age. Thus, in this study we implemented a classic RHI protocol (synchronous versus asynchronous stroking) with healthy younger (18–35) and older (65+) adults and measured the magnitude of proprioceptive drift and the subjective exp erience of body ownership. As an adjunctive objective measure, skin temperature was recorded to evaluate whether decreases in skin temperature were associated with illusory percepts, as has been shown previously. The RHI was observed for both age groups with respect to increased drift and higher rat ings of ownership following synchronous compared to asynchronous stroking. Importantly, no effects of age and no interactions between age and condition were observed for either of these outcome measures. No effects were observed for skin temperature. O...

Source: Multisensory research - December 28, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Jennifer L. Campos, Graziella El-Khechen Richandi, Babak Taati and Behrang Keshavarz Source Type: research