González-Franco, M;
Peck, TC;
Rodriguez-Fornells, A;
Slater, M;
(2014)
A threat to a virtual hand elicits motor cortex activation.
Experimental Brain Research
, 232
(3)
pp. 875-887.
10.1007/s00221-013-3800-1.
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Abstract
We report an experiment where participants observed an attack on their virtual body as experienced in an immersive virtual reality (IVR) system. Participants sat by a table with their right hand resting upon it. In IVR, they saw a virtual table that was registered with the real one, and they had a virtual body that substituted their real body seen from a first person perspective. The virtual right hand was collocated with their real right hand. Event-related brain potentials were recorded in two conditions, one where the participant’s virtual hand was attacked with a knife and a control condition where the knife only struck the virtual table. Significantly greater P450 potentials were obtained in the attack condition confirming our expectations that participants had a strong illusion of the virtual hand being their own, which was also strongly supported by questionnaire responses. Higher levels of subjective virtual hand ownership correlated with larger P450 amplitudes. Mu-rhythm event-related desynchronization in the motor cortex and readiness potential (C3–C4) negativity were clearly observed when the virtual hand was threatened—as would be expected, if the real hand was threatened and the participant tried to avoid harm. Our results support the idea that event-related potentials may provide a promising non-subjective measure of virtual embodiment. They also support previous experiments on pain observation and are placed into context of similar experiments and studies of body perception and body ownership within cognitive neuroscience.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A threat to a virtual hand elicits motor cortex activation |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s00221-013-3800-1 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-013-3800-1 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Body ownership, Rubber hand illusion, Virtual reality, Motor cortex, Pain, ERPs |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10073445 |
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