Crossed hands strengthen and diversify proprioceptive drift in the self-touch illusion

Kenri Kodaka, Yuki Ishihara

In the self-touch illusion (STI), some can feel that both hands are touching each other even when they are separated actually. This is achieved by giving synchronized touches to both hands. Because the STI involves both hands (an administrating hand and a receptive hand) of a single person, two types of proprioceptive drifts (PDs) simultaneously occur in such a way that both hands are attracted to each other. It is known that the PD distance is generally larger for the administrating hand than for the receptive hand when the two hands are uncrossed. However, it remains unclear why such an asymmetrical relationship is observed universally. In this study, we conducted two types of experiment to induce the STI. The first experiment involved four conditions combining a factor of "whether the hands are uncrossed or crossed" and a factor of "whether the administrating hand is resting or active on the surface," with the receptive (left) hand located at the body's midline. The result demonstrated that crossing hands and resting on surface (ROS) induced the STI. Specifically, crossing hands enhanced the amount of PD distance by more than two or three times. Moreover, it is interesting that strong PD with dominance of the receptive hand, which did not appear in the uncrossed condition, was observed frequently. The second experiment collected seven "illusion-sensitive" participants from the first experiment, all of whom had a strong tendency to feel the self-touch, and examined the effect of the location of the body midline on the PD when hands are crossed with the administrating hand ROS. The result demonstrated that the dominant hand on the PD completely differed among participants, but was relatively stable over the midline position and time in the same person. We also found that a small number of participants exhibited quite a different pattern of the PD in the identical posture. On the basis of the results, we analyze in detail how the dominant hand on the PD is determined in the STI.