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Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2004;292:794.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

A phenomenon called the "rubber hand illusion" is helping scientists understand how the brain recognizes that a limb or other part belongs to the body, according to a study by British scientists. The work was published on July 2 in an online edition of Science (http://www.sciencemag.org).

Tricking the brain into perceiving that a rubber hand belongs to the body and feels sensation may illuminate stroke and other conditions in which self-perception is abnormal. (Photo credit: University College London)

H. Henrik Ehrsson, MD, PhD, and colleagues at University College London and University of Oxford used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor volunteers' brain activity during experiments featuring this illusion, in which a prosthetic hand is placed on a table in the same orientation as the volunteer's own hand (which is hidden from view beneath the table). First, the researchers stroked both hands simultaneously with small . . . [Full Text of this Article]