Hallucinations are not entirely dependent on the mind

Researchers at Oxford University found that hallucinations make people believe they have a rubber hand, not entirely dependent on the mind. They observed both their physical response, and their findings provided new insights into the states that affect the patient's sense of self and body, such as stroke, schizophrenia, autism, and eating disorders.

The rubber hand illusion consists of placing a rubber hand in front of the participant, in sight and near their real hand. Then the real hand was covered by a partition. If real hands and rubber hands are touched or poked in the same way and at the same time, participants try to link what they feel (real hands poked) and see (hands Rubber is poked). They may feel a change of position, in which they believe their real hand is in the position of the rubber hand.

Dr. G Lorimer Moseley of the Department of Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics at Oxford University said: 'People experience this strange illusion. They will say: 'I feel like I own a rubber hand'.

Dr. Moseley, along with Professor Charles Spence of the Department of Experimental Physiology and researchers in Italy and the Netherlands, published in PNAS that the integration of rubber hands into their own sense of self We create physical impact. It was like they were 'denying' the real hand, causing the temperature at the hand to drop.

Participants with a rubber hand were placed in sight, while their real hands were hidden behind the partition.(Photo: Oxford University).

Dr. Mosely said: 'Hand illusions are the right tool to control your sense of self. It tells us about the instability of our feelings about the body, the feeling of who we are ourselves. '

The feeling of body possession is a fundamental aspect of self-awareness - the feeling of the body belongs to you and is always there. This important sense of self is broken in a number of different neurological and neurological conditions, such as after stroke, autism, epilepsy, anorexia and bulimia.

People who experience complex local pain syndrome can lead to significant distortion of their physical sensations. They may not recognize a limb, feeling that it does not belong to them or that the kit is larger than normal.

Many deformations of body image or sensation are also associated with a decrease in temperature in part or a part of the body.

Dr. Moseley said: 'We want to know if it is possible to reproduce this phenomenon, so that we can control the sense of ownership of the body and reduce the temperature in a part of the body or a limb. That's exactly what we observed. '

'The feeling of self comes from being born and from the continuous signal that the brain receives from parts of the body. We have proven that it is a two-way relationship. The mind can affect the tissues of the body, the mind can also control a body's composition. '