Abstract
Body ownership and agency are fundamental to self-consciousness. These bodily experiences have been intensively investigated using the rubber hand illusion, wherein participants perceive a fake hand as their own. After presentation of the illusion, the position of the participant’s hand then shifts toward the location of the fake hand (proprioceptive drift). However, it remains controversial whether proprioceptive drift is able to provide an objective measurement of body ownership, and whether agency also affects drift. Using the virtual hand illusion (VHI), the current study examined the effects of body ownership and agency on proprioceptive drift, with three different visuo-motor tasks. Twenty healthy adults (29.6 ± 9.2 years old) completed VH manipulations using their right hand under a 2 × 2 factorial design (active vs. passive manipulation, and congruent vs. incongruent virtual hand). Prior to and after VH manipulation, three different tasks were performed to assess proprioceptive drift, in which participants were unable to see their real hands. The effects of the VHI on proprioceptive drift were task-dependent. When participants were required to judge the position of their right hand using a ruler, or by reaching toward a visual target, both body ownership and agency modulated proprioceptive drift. Comparatively, when participants aligned both hands, drift was influenced by ownership but not agency. These results suggest that body ownership and agency might differentially modulate various body representations in the brain.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. M. Wada and Dr. M. Ide for their helpful comments on the manuscript. This study was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI, grant numbers 25350776 to SS and 26120002 to YO.
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Shibuya, S., Unenaka, S. & Ohki, Y. Body ownership and agency: task-dependent effects of the virtual hand illusion on proprioceptive drift. Exp Brain Res 235, 121–134 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-016-4777-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-016-4777-3