Experimental Brain Research

, Volume 182, Issue 4, pp 537–548 | Cite as

Alleviating the ‘crossed-hands’ deficit by seeing uncrossed rubber hands

Research Article
First Online:
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Accepted:

Abstract

Localizing and reacting to tactile events on our skin requires the coordination between primary somatotopic projections and an external representation of space. Previous research has attributed an important role to early visual experience in shaping up this mapping. Here, we addressed the role played by immediately available visual information about body posture. We asked participants to determine the temporal order of two successive tactile events delivered to the hands while they adopted a crossed or an uncrossed-hands posture. As previously found, hand-crossing led to a dramatic impairment in tactile localization, which is a phenomenon attributed to a mismatch between somatotopic and externally-based frames of reference. In the present study, however, participants watched a pair of rubber hands that were placed either in a crossed or uncrossed posture (congruent or incongruent with the posture of their own hands). The results showed that the crossed-hands deficit can be significantly ameliorated by the sight of uncrossed rubber hands (Experiment 1). Moreover, this visual modulation seemed to depend critically on the degree to which the visual information about the rubber hands can be attributed to one’s own actions, in a process revealing short-term adaptation (Experiment 2).

Keywords

Multisensory integration Rubber-hand illusion Somatosensation Temporal order judgements Vision 

Abbreviations

JND

Just noticeable difference

LED

Light-emitting diode

PSS

Point of subjective simultaneity

SI

Primary somatosensory cortex

SOA

Stimulus onset asynchrony

TOJ

Temporal order judgement

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Notes

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2004-04363-C03-02. E.A. is supported by a fellowship Beca de Formación de Profesorado Universitario from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. We would like to thank Joan López-Moliner for his valuable help with the data analyses. We would also like to thank Mikel Santesteban and Aida Mallorquí.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2007

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Parc Científic de BarcelonaUniversitat de BarcelonaBarcelonaSpain
  2. 2.Departament de Psicologia BàsicaUniversitat de BarcelonaBarcelonaSpain
  3. 3.Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avaçats (ICREA)BarcelonaSpain
  4. 4.Grup de Recerca Neurociència Cognitiva, Parc Científic de BarcelonaHospital Sant Joan de Déu (Edifici Docent)Esplugues de Llobregat (Barcelona)Spain

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