Feeling Pain in the Rubber Hand: Integration of Visual, Proprioceptive, and Painful Stimuli

Abstract

The visual capture phenomenon has recently been explored, especially in the context of the rubber-hand illusion (RHI)—an illusion in which tactile sensations are referred to an illusory limb. We have induced the RHI with the difference that tactile-painful stimuli were added in order to verify the interaction between vision, touch, proprioception, and pain. Thirty volunteers were used. We found that tactile-painful stimuli could cause the same illusion as purely tactile stimuli. This result suggests that localisation of pain may also be distorted by spurious visual cues. The implications of this finding for distorted human proprioception (as in amputees with phantom pain or limbs) are discussed.