Basic research to elucidate the mechanism of the haptic illusion inducing smoothness

Abstract

There is an illusion phenomenon called Velvet Hand Illusion (VHI), in which two steel wires are sandwiched between both hands and rubbed back and forth to create a smooth sensation on the palm. In order to quantitatively evaluate the touch feeling of VHI, a series of psychophysical experiments was performed using the SD method and factor analysis to obtain the psychophysical dimension of tactile perception. As a result, it was found that the difference in VHI sensation between the dot-matrix VHI and the wire VHI was caused by the influence of each stimulating material. It was also clarified that VHI was a phenomenon caused by integration rather than lateral inhibition.