Studying the Role of Self and External Touch in the Appropriation of Dysmorphic Hands

In Virtual Reality, self-touch (ST) stimulation is a promising method of sense of body ownership (SoBO) induction that does not require an external effector. However, its applicability to dysmorphic bodies has not been explored yet and remains uncertain due to the requirement to provide incongruent visuomotor sensations. In this, paper, we studied the effect of ST stimulation on dysmorphic hands via haptic retargeting, as compared to a classical external-touch (ET) stimulation, on the SoBO. Our results indicate that ST can induce similar levels of dysmorphic SoBO than ET stimulation, but that some types of dysmorphism might decrease the ST stimulation accuracy due to the nature of the re-targeting that they induce.