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Illusory movements induced by tendon vibration in right- and left-handed people

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Abstract

Frequency-specific vibratory stimulation of peripheral tendons induces an illusion of limb movement that may be useful for restoring proprioceptive information in people with sensorimotor disability. This potential application may be limited by inter- and intra-subject variability in the susceptibility to such an illusion, which may depend on a variety of factors. To explore the influence of stimulation parameters and participants’ handedness on the movement illusion, we vibrated the right and left tendon of the biceps brachii in a group of right- and left-handed people with five stimulation frequencies (from 40 to 120 Hz in step of 20 Hz). We found that all participants reported the expected illusion of elbow extension, especially after 40 and 60 Hz. Left-handers exhibited less variability in reporting the illusion compared to right-handers across the different stimulation frequencies. Moreover, the stimulation of the non-dominant arm elicited a more vivid illusion with faster onset relative to the stimulation of the dominant arm, an effect that was independent from participants’ handedness. Overall, our data show that stimulation frequency, handedness and arm dominance influence the tendon vibration movement illusion. The results are discussed in reference to their relevance in linking motor awareness, improving current devices for motor ability recovery after brain or spinal damage and developing prosthetics and virtual embodiment systems.

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Acknowledgments

Financial support from the EU Information and Communication Technologies Grant (VERE project, FP7-ICT-2009-5, Prot. Num. 257695), the Italian Ministry of Health (RF-2010-2312912).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy

    Emmanuele Tidoni, Gabriele Fusco & Salvatore Maria Aglioti

  2. Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Roma La Sapienza, Rome, Italy

    Emmanuele Tidoni, Gabriele Fusco & Salvatore Maria Aglioti

  3. PERCRO (Perceptual Robotics) Laboratory, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

    Daniele Leonardis, Antonio Frisoli & Massimo Bergamasco

Authors
  1. Emmanuele Tidoni
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  2. Gabriele Fusco
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  3. Daniele Leonardis
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  4. Antonio Frisoli
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  5. Massimo Bergamasco
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  6. Salvatore Maria Aglioti
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Correspondence to Emmanuele Tidoni.

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Tidoni, E., Fusco, G., Leonardis, D. et al. Illusory movements induced by tendon vibration in right- and left-handed people. Exp Brain Res 233, 375–383 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-014-4121-8

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