The effect of rubber hand illusion on congruency effect

Noriaki Kanayama, School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University

Abstract
The congruency effect suggests a promoted response in the condition with a spatial congruent multimodal stimulation, when participants were asked to discriminate between two locations of vibrotactile stimulation to participant's own hand (the index finger and thumb) while ignoring distracter lights presented to rubber hand, (Pavani et al., 2000). While Pavani et al (2000) demonstrated the effect was modulated by the existence of rubber hand with the posture which mimicked that of the participants' hand, generally the effect can be observed in the condition both of multimodal stimulations were presented to participants' hand without using the rubber hand. These results suggest that a rubber hand produces "Congruency effect" by making the feeling of a participants' hand projected on a rubber hand. In the studies, we examined whether these congruency effects (Study1, Both to a real hand; Study2, tactile to a real hand and visual to a rubber hand) would essentially be the same by a separation of the congruency effect (promotion effect and inhibition effect) and the EEG activity. In the result, the congruency effect with rubber hand was caused mainly by promotion effect, and the effect with no rubber hand was caused by the inhibition effect.

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