Body Transfer Illusion – Rubber Hand Illusion

This is a fascinating phenomenon where the visual perspective of a subject is fooled into believing that an object is part of their own body. The best example of this is the Rubber Hand Illusion illustrated in the video below.

From WikiPedia
Body transfer illusion is the illusion of owning either a part of a body or an entire body other than one’s own, thus it is sometimes referred to as “body ownership” in the research literature. It can be induced experimentally by manipulating the visual perspective of the subject and also supplying visual and sensory signals which correlate to the subject’s body. For it to occur, bottom-up perceptual mechanisms, such as the input of visual information, must override top-down knowledge that the certain body (or part) does not belong. This is what results in an illusion of transfer of body ownership. It is typically induced using virtual reality.