Research study discovers that the popular rubber hand illusion could be utilized to treat OCD

Fake it til you make it–.

New strategy might offer an efficient bridge to standard exposure therapy.

Jennifer Ouellette

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Fictional detective Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) famously suffered from OCD, with a powerful germ phobia, among many others. Perhaps

Enlarge / Imaginary investigator Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) notoriously suffered from OCD, with an effective germ phobia, amongst numerous others. Maybe “multi sensory stimulation treatment” would have helped.

U.S.A. Network

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Opportunities are excellent that you’ve seen amusing video footage of the so-called “rubber hand impression,” where somebody becomes convinced that a fake rubber hand is really their own. It’s more than a clever celebration trick. Not only does the illusion shed light on how the brain “maps” our physical bodies, it might likewise prove to be an effective treatment for clients experiencing obsessive compulsive condition (OCD), according to a current paper released in Frontiers in Neuroscience.

German philosopher Martin Heidegger presented the notion of “ready-to-hand” in the 1930 s to explain how the body can include our most familiar functional tools into its idea of the self, similar to a blind individual who routinely utilizes a walking cane to browse his/her surroundings. As far as the brain is concerned, the walking cane ends up being an extension of the physique.

Studies have revealed a similar impact when we routinely utilize a computer mouse. It might even be true of our avatars in virtual area. Virtual truth master Jaron Lanier presented the principle of “homuncular versatility” in the 1980 s to explain how the brain might end up being not able to distinguish between our real and virtual bodies with time. If something bad occurs to you in the virtual world, the very same neural circuitry is triggered that would be engaged if it took place to you in the “real” world.

That’s the underlying essence of the rubber hand illusion, designed by Princeton University neuroscientist Matthew Botvinick back when he was still a graduate student. A subject’s hand is hidden from view and changed by a rubber hand in the exact same position where the real hand would typically be. The illusionist strokes both genuine and fake hands concurrently. It doesn’t take long for the based on start to respond to the rubber hand as if it were their own. A common technique is to stab the rubber hand with a hammer or a knife and watch the subject recoil in genuine horror. In 2011, Henrik Ehrsson, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, tweaked the experiment to encourage subjects that they had a third hand.

The rubber hand illusion

  • The genuine hand is hidden and rubber hand positioned in the position the genuine hand would generally be.

  • Both genuine and rubber hands are then rubbed all at once for a number of seconds.

  • When the illusion has taken hold, the subject will react to a threat to the rubber hand as if it were the real hand.

The sensory feedback from the simultaneous stroking of both the genuine and rubber hands essentially “couples” the subject to the rubber hand, such that the brain perceives it as an extension of the physical body– what’s known as a body transfer illusion.

Follow-up research studies in which the rubber hand was threatened by a stabbing motion with a needle revealed increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, indicating the anticipation of pain. Subjects responded to the threat as if the rubber hand were their own, often even moving their surprise genuine hand to prevent the needle.

More just recently, in 2016, Italian scientists utilized transcranial magnetic stimulation throughout the rubber hand experiment to activate electrical pulses in the area of the brain that manages hand motion. They discovered a noticable reduction in the strength of those pulses in subjects’ real hands once the illusion had actually taken hold.

Fake feces

The present research study builds on previous work that co-author Baland Jalal, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, performed in 2015 with fellow neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran of the University of California, San Diego. Their subjects for that study did not experience OCD. In this variation of the rubber hand impression, Jalal and Ramachandran infected the rubber hand with fake feces (a mix of chocolate and peanut butter) and discovered that the topics experienced strong disgust as if their real hand had actually been smeared with feces. A subsequent Japanese research study duplicated those results, strengthening the case for utilizing this “multi sensory stimulation treatment” to deal with OCD.

A basic technique to OCD treatment is combining medications like Prozac with direct exposure treatment. This usually involves patients being asked to touch infected surface areas and then not letting them compulsively wash their hands afterward as they would generally do.

(left) Schematic of rubber hand experimental setup. (right) The

Enlarge /(left) Schematic of rubber hand speculative setup. (right) The “disgust stimulus,” aka fake feces (in fact a mixture of chocolate and peanut butter).

Baland Jalal et al./ Front. in Neurosci.

For this most current research study, Jalal et al. recruited 29 OCD patients from an institute associated with Harvard Medical School. Sixteen went through the rubber hand experiment with both fake and genuine hands being rubbed concurrently, while the staying 13 in the control group had their hands stroked out of sync. When the impression had actually taken hold, the scientists smeared phony feces on the rubber hand while concurrently dabbing the topics’ real hand (concealed from view) with a moist paper towel. Subjects were then asked to rate how much disgust, anxiety, or urges to wash their hands they experienced.

Remarkably, topics in both groups showed prone to the rubber hand impression, even though healthy topics don’t experience it if the two hands are stroked out of sync (as was done with the control group). After the damp paper towel was eliminated, with the fake feces still on the rubber hand, the researchers continued to stroke both hands for another 5 minutes. This shows that the longer the hands are stroked, the more powerful the illusion ends up being.

For the last of the experiment, Jalal et al. put the phony feces on the topics’ genuine hand and when again asked them to rank their disgust and stress and anxiety levels from 1 to10 The subjects in the control group reported typical levels of around 7, but those in the integrated group had much higher levels of almost 9. “Gradually, rubbing the real and fake hands in synchrony appears to produce a more powerful and more powerful and more powerful illusion to the extent that it ultimately felt very much like their own hand,” stated Jalal. “This implied that after ten minutes, the reaction to contamination was more severe. Although this was the point our experiment ended, research has shown that ongoing exposure leads to a decline in contamination sensations, which is the basis of traditional direct exposure therapy.”

Jalal is hopeful this method could supply a bridge to allow OCD patients to much better tolerate direct exposure therapy, especially because the topics found the rubber hand illusion entertaining, which assisted put them at ease and made the experience less difficult. The next step is to carry out randomized medical trials with bigger sample sizes to compare this new method to existing exposure treatment strategies.

” All in all, this basic, immersive, and economical intervention might result in greater treatment uptake and lower dropout and help with early intervention,” the authors wrote. “It is incomparably appropriate for poorly resourced and emergency situation settings, consisting of low-income and developing nations with minimal access to high-tech solutions like virtual reality.”

DOI: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience,2020 10.3389/ fnhum.201900414(About DOIs).

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