ArticleFrontiers in human neuroscience2014
Rubber hand illusion induced by touching the face ipsilaterally to a deprived hand: evidence for plastic "somatotopic" remapping in tetraplegics.
Article in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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25 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- Neural mechanisms underlying the Rubber Hand Illusion: A systematic review of related neurophysiological studies.Brain and behavior · 2021Pooled it
- Trial
- Virtual reality improves embodiment and neuropathic pain caused by spinal cord injury.Neurology · 2017Trial
- Impact of an upper limb motion-driven virtual rehabilitation system on residual motor function in patients with complete spinal cord injury： a pilot study.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2025Article
- How pain and body representations transform each other: A narrative review.Journal of neuropsychology · 2025Review
- Individual Differences in Bodily Self-Consciousness and Its Neural Basis.Brain sciences · 2024Review
- Facilitation of imitative movement in patients with chronic hemiplegia triggered by illusory ownership.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Muscle activity prior to experiencing the rubber hand illusion is associated with alterations in perceived hand location.Psychological research · 2023Article
- Temporal judgments of actions following unilateral brain damage.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- What the study of spinal cord injured patients can tell us about the significance of the body in cognition.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2022Review
- Rethinking the Body in the Brain after Spinal Cord Injury.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Bodily Illusions and Motor Imagery in Fibromyalgia.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021Article
- Impact of visuomotor feedback on the embodiment of virtual hands detached from the body.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Visuo-motor and interoceptive influences on peripersonal space representation following spinal cord injury.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Embodying their own wheelchair modifies extrapersonal space perception in people with spinal cord injury.Experimental brain research · 2019Article
- Do movements contribute to sense of body ownership? Rubber hand illusion in expert pianists.Psychological research · 2019Article
- The Embodiment of Objects: Review, Analysis, and Future Directions.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2019Review
- Anticipation of wheelchair and rollerblade actions in spinal cord injured people, rollerbladers, and physiotherapists.PloS one · 2019Article
- Action Shapes the Sense of Body Ownership Across Human Development.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Mirror Box Training in Hemiplegic Stroke Patients Affects Body Representation.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundStudies in animals and humans indicate that the interruption of body-brain connections following spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to plastic cerebral reorganization.
objectiveTo explore whether inducing the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) via synchronous multisensory visuo-tactile bodily stimulation may reveal any perceptual correlates of plastic remapping in SCI.
methodsIn 16 paraplegic, 16 tetraplegic and 16 healthy participants we explored whether RHI may be induced by tactile stimuli involving not only the left hand but also the left hemi-face. Touching the participants actual hand or face was either synchronous or asynchronous with tactile stimuli seen on a rubber hand. We assessed two components of the illusion, namely perceived changes in the real hand in space (indexed by proprioceptive drift) and ownership of the rubber hand (indexed by subjective responses to an ad-hoc questionnaire).
resultsProprioceptive drift and ownership were found in the healthy group only in the condition where the left real and fake hand were touched simultaneously. In contrast, no drift was found in the SCI patients who, however, showed ownership after both synchronous and asynchronous hand stroking. Importantly, only tetraplegics showed the effect also after synchronous face stroking.
conclusionsRHI may reveal plastic phenomena in SCI. In hand representation-deprived tetraplegics, stimuli on the face (represented contiguously in the somatic and motor systems), drive the sense of hand ownership. This hand-face remapping phenomenon may be useful for restoring a sense of self in massively deprived individuals.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.