A sense of losing one’s hand induced by visuotactile conflict in virtual reality
Scientific Reports July 19, 2026 Ayato Imai, Masayuki Hara, Noriaki Kanayama
A sensorimotor feedback paradigm using virtual reality induced a sense of body loss—the feeling that one's own body part disappears. Participants moved a virtual right hand synchronized with their real right hand to repeatedly touch the index finger of a virtual left hand. When the real and virtual right hands were spatially displaced but the virtual fingers appeared to touch, participants reported a pronounced sense of body loss and sensory attenuation, along with greater proprioceptive drift and unconscious movements of the left index finger. Visuotactile conflict during virtual self-touch can thus produce a sense of bodily disappearance.