title: Viewing and feeling touch modulates hand position for reaching.
abstract: Action requires knowledge of our body location in space. Here we asked if interactions with the external world prior to a reaching action influence how visual location information is used. We investigated if the temporal synchrony between viewing and feeling touch modulates the integration of visual and proprioceptive body location information for action. We manipulated the synchrony between viewing and feeling touch in the Rubber Hand Illusion paradigm prior to participants performing a ballistic reaching task to a visually specified target. When synchronous touch was given, reaching trajectories were significantly shifted compared to asynchronous touch. The direction of this shift suggests that touch influences the encoding of hand position for action. On the basis of this data and previous findings, we propose that the brain uses correlated cues from passive touch and vision to update its own position for action and experience of self-location.
authors.affiliation: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Institute of Human Cognition and Brain Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia. Electronic address: regine.zopf@mq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Regine
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zopf
authors.affiliation: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Institute of Human Cognition and Brain Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia; Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. Electronic address: sandra.truong@nih.gov.
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Truong
authors.affiliation: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Institute of Human Cognition and Brain Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Finkbeiner
authors.affiliation: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Institute of Human Cognition and Brain Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Jason
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Friedman
authors.affiliation: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Institute of Human Cognition and Brain Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Mark A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Williams
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001828:Body Image; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006225:Hand / Q000294:innervation*; D006801:Humans; D007088:Illusions / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology*; D055698:Touch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult