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Haptic illusions provide unique insights into how we model our bodies separate from our environment. Popular illusions like the rubber-hand illusion and mirror-box illusion have demonstrated that we can adapt the internal representations of our limbs in response to visuo-haptic conflicts. In this manuscript, we extend this knowledge by investigating to what extent, if any, we also augment our external representations of the environment and its action on our bodies in response to visuo-haptic conflicts. Utilizing a mirror and a robotic brushstroking platform, we create a novel illusory paradigm that presents a visuo-haptic conflict using congruent and incongruent tactile stimuli applied to participants' fingers. Overall, we observed that participants perceived an illusory tactile sensation on their visually occluded finger when seeing a visual stimulus that was inconsistent with the actual tactile stimulus provided. We also found residual effects of the illusion after the conflict was removed. These findings highlight how our need to maintain a coherent internal representation of our body extends to our model of our environment.
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How small changes to one eye’s retinal image can transform the perceived shape of a very familiar object
Vision can provide useful cues about the geometric properties of an object, like its size, distance, pose, and shape. But how the brain merges these properties into a complete sensory representation of a three-dimensional object is poorly understood. To address this gap, we investigated a visual illusion in which humans misperceive the shape of an object due to a small change in one eye’s retinal image. We first show that this illusion affects percepts of a highly familiar object under completely natural viewing conditions. Specifically, people perceived their own rectangular mobile phone to have a trapezoidal shape. We then investigate the perceptual underpinnings of this illusion by asking people to report both the perceived shape and pose of controlled stimuli. Our results suggest that the shape illusion results from distorted cues to object pose. In addition to yielding insights into object perception, this work informs our understanding of how the brain combines information from multiple visual cues in natural settings. The shape illusion can occur when people wear everyday prescription spectacles; thus, these findings also provide insight into the cue combination challenges that some spectacle wearers experience on a regular basis.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2041726
- PAR ID:
- 10568292
- Publisher / Repository:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Volume:
- 121
- Issue:
- 17
- ISSN:
- 0027-8424
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400086121
