The coherent perceptual experience of one's own body depends on the processing and integration of signals from multiple sensory modalities, including vision, touch, and proprioception. Although nociception provides critical information about damage to the tissues of one's body, little is known about how nociception contributes to own-body perception. A classic experimental approach to investigate the perceptual and neural mechanisms involved in the multisensory experience of one's own body is the rubber hand illusion (RHI). During the RHI, people experience a rubber hand as part of their own body (sense of body ownership) caused by synchronized stroking of the rubber hand in the participant's view and the hidden participant's real hand. We examined whether the RHI can be elicited by visual and "pure" nociceptive stimulation, ie, without tactile costimulation, and if so, whether it follows the basic perceptual rules of the illusion. In 6 separate experiments involving a total of 180 healthy participants, we used a Nd:YAP laser stimulator to specifically target C and Aδ fibers in the skin and compared the illusion condition (congruent visuonociceptive stimulation) to control conditions of incongruent visuonociceptive, incongruent visuoproprioceptive, and no nociceptive stimulation. The illusion was quantified through direct (questionnaire) and indirect (proprioceptive drift) behavioral measures. We found that a nociceptive rubber hand illusion (N-RHI) could be elicited and that depended on the spatiotemporal congruence of visuonociceptive signals, consistent with basic principles of multisensory integration. Our results suggest that nociceptive information shapes multisensory bodily awareness and contributes to the sense of body ownership.

中文翻译：

---

通过激活伤害性 C 纤维和 Aδ 纤维引发橡胶手错觉。


自身身体的连贯感知体验取决于对多种感官信号的处理和整合，包括视觉、触觉和本体感觉。尽管伤害感受提供了有关人体组织损伤的重要信息，但我们对伤害感受如何影响自身的身体知觉知之甚少。研究人体多感官体验中涉及的知觉和神经机制的经典实验方法是橡胶手错觉（RHI）。在 RHI 期间，由于参与者视野中的橡胶手和隐藏的参与者真实的手同步抚摸，人们会体验到橡胶手是自己身体的一部分（身体所有权感）。我们检查了 RHI 是否可以通过视觉和“纯粹”伤害性刺激（即没有触觉共刺激）引起，如果可以，它是否遵循幻觉的基本知觉规则。在涉及总共 180 名健康参与者的 6 个独立实验中，我们使用 Nd:YAP 激光刺激器专门针对皮肤中的 C 和 Aδ 纤维，并比较错觉条件（一致的视觉伤害刺激）以控制不一致的视觉伤害、不一致的视觉本体感觉、并且没有伤害性刺激。通过直接（问卷）和间接（本体感觉漂移）行为测量来量化这种错觉。我们发现，可以引发伤害性橡胶手错觉（N-RHI），并且这取决于视觉伤害信号的时空一致性，与多感觉整合的基本原理一致。我们的研究结果表明，伤害性信息塑造了多感官身体意识，并有助于增强身体所有权感。