Video: Rubber hand illusion

Read about all the tactile and body illusions in our special feature

About 10 years ago, psychologists in Pennsylvania discovered an amazing illusion. They found that they could convince people that a rubber hand was their own by putting it on a table in front of them while stroking it in the same way as their real hand (see box, for a how-to guide).

The now-famous “rubber hand illusion” was not only a mind-blowing party trick, it was also hugely important in understanding how sight, touch and “proprioception” – the sense of body position – combine to create a convincing feeling of body ownership, one of the foundations of self-consciousness (Nature, vol 391, p 756).

In recent years that understanding has been explored further using increasingly freaky illusions. “The rubber hand illusion really inspired people,” says Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. He is one of many researchers who have taken the illusion and run with it, creating a whole new set of “bodily illusions” that mess with our sense of self in strange and disturbing ways. “We’re doing all kinds of crazy stuff,” he says.


The work could have applications in virtual reality, but ultimately, he says, “we want to know how the brain represents the body. It’s a problem of multisensory integration – your eyes, your skin, your muscles. It is crucial to combine them in the right way to perceive your body. We want to learn how the integration takes place.”

Rubber hand illusion

To experience the rubber hand illusion, you’ll need a fake hand of some kind – an inflated rubber glove will often do the trick – a flat piece of cardboard and two small paintbrushes. Place the hand on a table in front of you and conceal your real hand behind the cardboard.

Now get somebody to stroke and tap the fake hand and real hand using identical movements of the paintbrushes. Look at the fake hand for a while until the illusion kicks in.

Read about all the tactile and body illusions in our special feature