Mu suppression as an index for designing tools that adapt to the body

Abstract

Humans can manipulate tools in order to achieve their life goals. After we become familiar with using any tool, the tool feels as if it is a part of our own body. Therefore, it might be possible to design a tool that is easy to use and operate, similar to a body part, because the body itself is the most “easy-to-use” tool. However, to date, it has been unclear how to objectively evaluate whether a tool could feel like a part of our body. This study investigated the neural basis of the feeling, “like my body,” as an objective index. In particular, we focused on the specific time window (0–50 seconds) in which the body representations update when introducing the rubber hand illusion, which is the illusory ownership of a dummy hand as a part of our own body. This study demonstrated mu suppression in the left parietal region during the focusing period. This finding suggests that this component of the electroencephalogram could be used in human engineering approaches for designing ‘easy-to-use” tools.