Display Settings:

Format

Send to:

Choose Destination
We are sorry, but NCBI web applications do not support your browser and may not function properly. More information
    Perception. 2009;38(2):310-2.

    How many arms make a pair? Perceptual illusion of having an additional limb.

    Source

    Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Retzius väg 8, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden. henrik.ehrsson@ki.se

    Abstract

    What are the natural constraints for the human body representation? Here I report a perceptual illusion where healthy individuals experience having two right arms, with both sensing touches applied to them. This effect reveals how visual and tactile signals from the body are integrated in a probabilistic fashion, resulting in a single limb being represented at two locations at the same time, giving rise to a perceptual duplication of this limb. This is an important observation because it suggests that even the gross morphology that we experience of ourselves is a construct resulting from dynamic and integrative processes in the perceptual systems.

    PMID:
    19400438
    [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

      Supplemental Content

      Save items

      Recent activity

      Your browsing activity is empty.

      Activity recording is turned off.

      Turn recording back on

      See more...
      Write to the Help Desk