Age-Related Changes in Peripersonal Space: Evidence From the Rubber Hand Illusion

Abstract In the rubber hand illusion (RHI), simultaneous brush stroking of a subject’s hidden hand and a visible rubber hand induces a transient illusion of the latter to “feel like it’s my hand” and a proprioceptive drift of the hidden own hand toward the rubber hand. Recent accounts of the RHI have suggested that the illusion would only occur if weighting of conflicting sensory information and their subsequent integration results in a statistically plausible compromise. In three different experiments, we investigated the role of distance between the two hands as well as their proximity to the body’s midline in influencing the occurrence of the illusion. Overall, the results suggest that the illusion is abolished when placing the two hands apart, therefore increasing the mismatch between the visual and proprioceptive modality, whereas the proximity of the two hands to the body’s midline plays only a minor role on the subjective report of the illusion. This might be driven by the response properties of visuotactile bimodal cells encoding the peripersonal space around the hand.

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Age-Related Changes in Attentional Reference Frames for Peripersonal Space

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797612457385 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 24 (4) ◽

pp. 557-561 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Emily K. Bloesch ◽

Christopher C. Davoli ◽

Richard A. Abrams

Keyword(s):

Reference Frames ◽

Peripersonal Space ◽

Age Related ◽

Age Related Changes

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The Rubber Hand Illusion in Healthy Younger and Older Adults

Multisensory Research ◽

10.1163/22134808-00002614 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 31 (6) ◽

pp. 537-555 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Jennifer L. Campos ◽

Graziella El-Khechen Richandi ◽

Babak Taati ◽

Behrang Keshavarz

Keyword(s):

Skin Temperature ◽

Subjective Experience ◽

Age Groups ◽

Objective Measure ◽

The Body ◽

Rubber Hand Illusion ◽

Body Ownership ◽

Rubber Hand ◽

Age Related ◽

Body Change

Percepts 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 displaced, 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 whether 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 experience 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 ratings 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. Overall, these results contribute to an emerging field of research investigating the conditions under which age-related differences in multisensory integration are observed by providing insights into the role of visual, proprioceptive, and tactile inputs on bodily percepts.

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Extending Bayesian Models of the Rubber Hand Illusion

Multisensory Research ◽

10.1163/22134808-20191440 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 33 (2) ◽

pp. 127-160 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Piotr Litwin

Keyword(s):

Spatial Information ◽

Wide Spectrum ◽

Bayesian Models ◽

Empirical Support ◽

Peripersonal Space ◽

Rubber Hand Illusion ◽

Rubber Hand ◽

Promising Alternative ◽

Sense Of Ownership ◽

Internal Body

Abstract Human body sense is surprisingly flexible — in the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI), precisely administered visuo-tactile stimulation elicits a sense of ownership over a fake hand. The general consensus is that there are certain semantic top-down constraints on which objects may be incorporated in this way: in particular, to-be-embodied objects should be structurally similar to a visual representation stored in an internal body model. However, empirical evidence shows that the sense of ownership may extend to objects strikingly distinct in morphology and structure (e.g., robotic arms) and the hypothesis about the relevance of appearance lacks direct empirical support. Probabilistic multisensory integration approaches constitute a promising alternative. However, the recent Bayesian models of RHI limit too strictly the possible factors influencing likelihood and prior probability distributions. In this paper, I analyse how Bayesian models of RHI could be extended. The introduction of skin-based spatial information can account for the cross-compensation of sensory signals giving rise to RHI. Furthermore, addition of Bayesian Coupling Priors, depending on (1) internal learned models of relatedness (coupling strength) of sensory cues, (2) scope of temporal binding windows, and (3) extension of peripersonal space, would allow quantification of individual tendencies to integrate divergent visual and somatosensory signals. The extension of Bayesian models would yield an empirically testable proposition accounting comprehensively for a wide spectrum of RHI-related phenomena and rendering appearance-oriented internal body models explanatorily redundant.

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