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Health

A virtual reality hand feels real after a zap to your brain

By Laura Olivieri Robles

12 April 2018

A person experiencing VR with transcranial magnetic stimulation

Feeling a hand that isn’t there

Marco Scopesi

Will we ever be able to truly feel like we’re inhabiting a virtual world? A virtual reality twist on the classic rubber hand illusion suggests we can – and all it takes is a bit of magnetic brain stimulation.

Around 20 years ago, psychologists in Pennsylvania discovered that they could convince people that a rubber hand was their own. They placed it on a table in front of a volunteer, and stroked it while simultaneously also stroking the person’s actual hand. The experiment inspired further “bodily illusion” experiments that mess…

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