14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers at the Vanderbilt University announce that mental health patients suffering from schizophrenia could benefit extensively from tactile illusion therapy. The idea is very new, and so there are very few investigators who actually take the time to assess its potential benefits.
Another important result the new study produced was evidence that schizophreniacs experience a weakened sense of body ownership. This makes the patients experience spontaneous, out-of-body experiences, one of which was tracked as it happened during the study, in the lab.
In order to conduct their study, the experts used the “rubber hand illusion,” a tactile illusion that revolves around making people watch how a rubber hand is being touched by a soft brush. At the same time, one of their hands is hidden from view, and touched in exactly the same manner at the same time.
If correctly done, this makes people believe that the rubber hand is their own. “After a while, patients with schizophrenia begin to ‘feel’ the rubber hand and disown their own hand. They also experience their real hand as closer to the rubber hand,” VU psychologist Dr. Sohee Park explains, quoted by PsychCentral.