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

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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).

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Fig. 1
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Notes

  1. The body is in a typical posture when the left limbs are placed on the left of the body and vice versa for the right limbs.

  2. In fact, in order to confirm this, we also explored the data using a 2-parameter model. The analysis of this condition results in a very significant, but clearly artifactual, difference in terms of time constant (P < 0.001).

  3. Statement #1 (“I felt as if my hands were uncrossed”); #2 (“It seemed as if the hand which pressed the top button was my real hand”) #3 (“I felt as if the rubber hands were my hands”) #4 (“It appeared as if my hands (under the box) were displacing towards the top (above the box)”), #5 (“It seemed as if I might have two right hands or two left hands”), #6 (“I felt as if my (real) hands were turning ‘rubbery’”) and #7 (“It appeared (visually) as if the rubber hands (on the top of the box) were displacing towards the bottom (towards my real hands)”).

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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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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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Parc Científic de Barcelona, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Elena Azañón & Salvador Soto-Faraco

  2. Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Elena Azañón & Salvador Soto-Faraco

  3. Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avaçats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain

    Salvador Soto-Faraco

  4. Grup de Recerca Neurociència Cognitiva, Parc Científic de Barcelona, Hospital Sant Joan de Déu (Edifici Docent), C/ Santa Rosa, 39-57, Planta 4ª, 08950, Esplugues de Llobregat (Barcelona), Spain

    Salvador Soto-Faraco

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  1. Elena Azañón
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Correspondence to Salvador Soto-Faraco.

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Azañón, E., Soto-Faraco, S. Alleviating the ‘crossed-hands’ deficit by seeing uncrossed rubber hands. Exp Brain Res 182, 537–548 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-1011-3

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