Proprioception is the sense of the body’s own actions in space. Proprioception is disrupted in many clinical conditions such as dystonia, Parkinson’s disease and stroke. This disruption affects the ability of these individuals to produce “normal” movements. For years different paradigms have been used by researchers to examine proprioception. Dr. Lee Walsh at Neuroscience Research Australia has redesigned the commonly used rubber hand illusion. Please view the links below to see Dr. Walsh demonstrate the newly redesigned “Moving Rubber Finger Illusion” on a recent airing of the ABC’s Radio National (December 6, 2015). The full article can be found here.
PUBLICATION
Heroux ME, Walsh LD, Butler AA and Gandevia SC. (2013). Is this my finger? Proprioceptive illusions of body ownership and representation. J Physiol 591: 5661-5670.
Walsh LD, Moseley GL, Taylor JL and Gandevia SC. (2011). Proprioceptive signals contribute to the sense of body ownership. J Physiol 589: 3009-3021.
I can’t access the new links either. Thanks for trying though!
Sorry about that Roy. I will contact the ABC and see if there is any way around this.
Unfortunately, Australian Broadcast Company content is not viewable via these links if you live in the US. Any idea if they are available via other links? I’d love to keep up with these developments.
Dear Roy,
Thank you for subscribing to our blog and for your interest in this area of research. I have pasted the YouTube links for the two videos below. I hope that this may help get around the problem you mentioned.
Rubber Hand Illusion
Rubber Finger Illusion
Cool. Nice videos, and I never realized that it was called the ‘Sydney plastic finger illusion’.
It might be important to point out that movement cues of the finger can be sensed by muscle receptors as well as skin and joint receptors. The crucial manipulation is when the digital nerves of the index finger in the pipe are blocked with anesthetic; at this point movement can only be signaled by the muscle receptors in muscle belly, which is in the forearm.
Thanks for your comment Marty. I am not sure if the name of the illusion is set in stone, and I am sure it has been called various different things, but for the purpose of this entry we were just keeping it consistent with the ABC RN’s program. Thanks for the additional information, I’m sure our readers will find it interesting.