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Brain Advance Access originally published online on December 11, 2008
Brain 2008 131(12):3443-3452; doi:10.1093/brain/awn297
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© 2008 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Upper limb amputees can be induced to experience a rubber hand as their own

H. Henrik Ehrsson1, Birgitta Rosén2, Anita Stockselius3, Christina Ragnö3, Peter Köhler3 and Göran Lundborg2

1Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Retzius väg 8, SE-171 77 Stockholm, 2Department of Hand Surgery, Malmö University Hospital, SE-20502 Malmö and 3Arm Prothesis Unit, the Red Cross Hospital, 102 16 Stockholm, Sweden

Correspondence to: Dr H. Henrik Ehrsson, Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Retzius väg 8, SE-171 77 Stockholm, Sweden E-mail: Henrik.Ehrsson{at}ki.se

We describe how upper limb amputees can be made to experience a rubber hand as part of their own body. This was accomplished by applying synchronous touches to the stump, which was out of view, and to the index finger of a rubber hand, placed in full view (26 cm medial to the stump). This elicited an illusion of sensing touch on the artificial hand, rather than on the stump and a feeling of ownership of the rubber hand developed. This effect was supported by quantitative subjective reports in the form of questionnaires, behavioural data in the form of misreaching in a pointing task when asked to localize the position of the touch, and physiological evidence obtained by skin conductance responses when threatening the hand prosthesis. Our findings outline a simple method for transferring tactile sensations from the stump to a prosthetic limb by tricking the brain, thereby making an important contribution to the field of neuroprosthetics where a major goal is to develop artificial limbs that feel like a real parts of the body.

Key Words: limb ownership; prosthetics; body representation; plasticity; illusion; referred sensation

Received May 31, 2008. Revised October 19, 2008. Accepted October 20, 2008.


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