The third hand illusion

Финалист конкурса Best Illusion of the Year 2015 Luke Bashford and Carsten Mehring, Bernstein Center Freiburg, University of Freiburg (Germany) В этой иллюзии люди начинают воспринимать третью руку, которой они управляют с помощью нейро-компьютернуого интерфейса как часть своего тела. We present the ‘Third Hand Illusion’, investigating whether it is possible for humans to feel that a virtual reality (VR) hand could be an additional part of their body which they also control. The illusion is created when subjects believe they control movements of the VR hand using a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), a device that can translate human brain activity into movements of a prosthetic hand. During the illusion participants felt as though they had an independent third hand despite the VR hand movements being artificially generated in time with the user’s intention but not specifically related to brain activity.