VR Study: Pain and Fear Disrupt Sense of Body Ownership

Author: Hiroshima University
Published: 21 Mar 2025 - Updated: 23 Aug 2026
Publication Details: Peer-Reviewed | Research, Study, Analysis

Table of Contents:
Synopsis - Definition - Overview - FAQs - Insights, Updates - Related Content

Synopsis

This research, peer reviewed and published in Frontiers in Psychology in December 2024, examined whether the mind's own interpretation of a body can override the sensory cues that normally make a virtual body feel like your own. Working at Hiroshima University, Kazuki Yamamoto and Takashi Nakao placed participants in a VR headset facing away from a virtual body, stroked the participant's real back in time with the avatar's, and successfully produced the full-body illusion. When those same participants were told to regard the virtual body as their own while it experienced abdominal pain, the illusion was inhibited, and the effect was strongest in people who scored higher on measures of depersonalization tendency. The takeaway is that expectation and prior experience, described in the literature as top-down interpretation, can block a sense of embodiment that touch and vision alone would otherwise create. That matters for anyone whose relationship with their own body has been altered, including people living with depersonalization-derealization disorder, chronic pain, stroke or limb loss, sensory processing differences, and older adults whose proprioception has changed with age, because it suggests that VR-based rehabilitation and body-awareness therapy may succeed or fail depending on how the person mentally frames the virtual body they are being asked to inhabit.*

At a Glance

1 - Fear responses were gauged with skin conductance after a knife appeared to strike the virtual body's back. Stronger reactions indicated stronger identification with the avatar.
2 - The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science funded the work at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Kazuki Yamamoto and Takashi Nakao carried out the experiments.
3 - The authors caution that the inhibition may stem from the negative interpretation or from the mismatch between real and virtual body states. Further work is needed to separate the two explanations.
4 - The illusion was created by stroking a participant's back while they watched the same touch applied to the avatar. That visuotactile pairing is a bottom-up method already well tested in illusion research.

Topic Definition

Body Ownership: Body ownership is the ordinary and largely unnoticed feeling that the body you see and move is yours, the sense that separates self from object and lets the brain decide in an instant whether a threat is aimed at you or at something in the room. Researchers study it by deliberately breaking it, most famously with the rubber hand illusion, in which a person watches a fake hand being stroked in time with their hidden real one until the fake hand starts to feel like part of them, and with the full-body illusion, which extends the same trick to an entire virtual avatar viewed from behind. Two kinds of input shape the result: bottom-up signals such as synchronized touch and vision, and top-down influences such as memory, expectation, and belief about what a body should feel like. Disruptions of body ownership appear in depersonalization-derealization disorder, some forms of stroke and brain injury, phantom limb sensation after amputation, chronic pain conditions, and certain psychiatric presentations, which is why the topic sits at the intersection of neuroscience, rehabilitation medicine, and the design of assistive and virtual reality technology.

Overview

The manipulation of top-down interpretation as one's symptomatic body reduces the sense of body ownership.

A study from Hiroshima University found that when people were told to imagine their virtual bodies in pain, their brains resisted the illusion of ownership. Their findings could provide insights into why some people may struggle with feeling connected to their own bodies, particularly in contexts involving depersonalization or negative physical states.

The sense of body ownership - the feeling that our body belongs to us - is crucial in distinguishing ourselves from objects and responding to threats. Researchers study it using techniques like the rubber hand illusion (RHI) and full-body illusion (FBI), in which an individual is somehow influenced to identify with ownership of a fake or virtual body. To explore how body ownership can be disrupted, researchers test whether top-down factors - where previous knowledge, memories, and beliefs shape how we perceive and interpret new information or stimuli - weaken the illusion when participants are asked to identify with a virtual body in a negative physical state.

Researchers published their results in Frontiers in Psychology in December 2024.

"Using the full-body illusion in virtual reality - where people begin to feel a virtual body as their own - we investigated how interpreting the virtual body as one's own body, while in a negative physical state, affects this illusion. This research can possibly relate to depersonalization, a condition where people struggle to feel their body as their own," said Kazuki Yamamoto, researcher and author of the study.

Participants were instructed to view a virtual body from the back using a virtual reality (VR) headset and imagine it as their own. Participants would watch the virtual body have their back stroked while their own physical body was stroked also which successfully illicited the illusion. This is a means of using bottom-up factors, which starts with an external stimulus to integrate visual-tactile information, and is a well-tested way to successfully influence the FBI.

To test the effect of top-down factors, the same course of action was instructed with the addition of identifying with the virtual body as their own in a negative physical state (feeling abdominal pain). After the participant watches their virtual body being stroked along their back, a fear stimulus is presented in the form of a knife driving into the virtual body's back. The fear response is measured using a skin-conductance response and the degree of conductance measures is then related to how strongly the participant is identifying with their virtual body.

One of the main points of this study is using top-down factors, which are expectation or biases on what something should feel like based on prior experience or interactions, to determine if these can also influence a sense of body ownership.

Results indicated that the full-body illusion was inhibited when asked to view the virtual body as their own with abdominal pain, and the higher the degree of depersonalization tendencies within the participants resulted in a lower degree of FBI.

This illustration shows the experimental setup where participants viewed a virtual body through VR goggles and received touch on their back. The experiment revealed that different interpretations of the virtual body led to different outcomes: when interpreted as my body, the illusion occurred, but when interpreted as my body with abdominal pain, the illusion was inhibited - Image Credit: Kazuki Yamamoto and Takashi Nakao, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University. Description of image for vision impaired: The image shows a person wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset, viewed from behind, with two thought bubbles representing different experiences of embodiment in VR. The person is physically touched on their lower back, while their VR avatar is touched in a different location. On the left side, the thought bubble suggests that the participant feels the virtual body as their own, leading to an illusion of body ownership. On the right side, the thought bubble suggests that when the virtual body is associated with pain, the illusion is inhibited. The diagram visually explains how perception in VR can influence the sense of body ownership and pain experience.

Researchers suggest this could be due to multiple factors, one of which being the manipulation of using top-down factors. Another suggestion is that the participants might have had difficulty perceiving the negative physical symptoms, therefore they had difficulty fully establishing the connection of "the virtual body is my body" which is key for the illusion to occur.

Given the findings of the study, more research can be done to fully understand why an inhibition of the illusion occurred.

"While we observed this inhibitory effect, further research is needed to determine whether it was specifically due to the negative interpretation or to differences between actual and virtual body states," said Takashi Nakao, researcher and author of the study.

The foundation provided by this study and subsequent studies can aid in clinical intervention for those suffering from disturbed body ownership, such as individuals with depersonalization-derealization disorder. This work can improve those individuals' sense of body ownership, which can greatly improve lives, not only for safety purposes but also sensory and perception purposes.

About the Study

Kazuki Yamamoto and Takashi Nakao of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University contributed to this research.

The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science funded this research.

Hiroshima University

Since its foundation in 1949, Hiroshima University has striven to become one of the most prominent and comprehensive universities in Japan for the promotion and development of scholarship and education. Consisting of 12 schools for undergraduate level and 5 graduate schools, ranging from natural sciences to humanities and social sciences, the university has grown into one of the most distinguished comprehensive research universities in Japan.

Frequently Asked Questions

NOTE: Researched FAQs by Disabled World (DW)

What is the rubber hand illusion

It is a laboratory technique in which a person watches a lifelike fake hand being brushed at the same moment their own hidden hand is brushed. Within a minute or two most people report that the fake hand feels like part of their body, which shows how readily vision and touch can be combined into a sense of ownership.

What is depersonalization-derealization disorder

It is a recognized dissociative condition in which a person feels detached from their own thoughts, body, or surroundings, often describing life as though watched through glass. Episodes can follow trauma, severe anxiety, or prolonged stress, and the condition is treatable with psychotherapy and management of any underlying anxiety or depression.

Why do researchers use skin conductance in these experiments

Skin conductance rises when sweat glands respond to arousal or threat, giving an involuntary measure that a participant cannot easily fake. In embodiment studies a jump in conductance when the virtual body is threatened suggests the brain is treating that body as its own.

Is virtual reality safe for people who experience dissociation

VR can trigger disorientation or a temporary sense of unreality in some users, so anyone with a dissociative condition should try it under clinical guidance rather than alone. Short sessions, frequent breaks, and a familiar person nearby reduce the risk of an unpleasant reaction.

Can virtual reality help with phantom limb pain

Several trials have used VR and mirror-based systems to give amputees visual feedback of a moving limb, and many participants report reduced pain during and after sessions. Results vary between individuals and the evidence base is still developing, so it is generally offered alongside other pain management rather than instead of it.

How does body ownership relate to prosthetic limbs

Users who feel a prosthesis as part of their body tend to use it more, control it more smoothly, and abandon it less often. Designers now build in sensory feedback such as touch and pressure signals specifically to encourage that sense of incorporation.

Can older adults use VR headsets comfortably

Many can, though headset weight, existing balance problems, cataracts, and dry eye all affect comfort and should be considered first. Seated sessions, a wide field of view, and slow visual motion make VR far more tolerable for older users.

Does the sense of body ownership change after a stroke

Yes, some stroke survivors experience a limb that feels foreign or not their own, a phenomenon linked to damage in parietal and insular regions. Therapies using mirrors, visual feedback, and repeated guided movement aim to rebuild that sense along with motor control.

Insights, Analysis, and Developments

Editorial Note: The quiet significance of this work is that it treats belief as a variable rather than background noise. Decades of rubber hand and full-body illusion studies have shown how easily synchronized touch can convince the brain that a foreign limb belongs to it, and the usual assumption has been that the sensory signal does the heavy lifting. Here the sensory signal was identical in both conditions, and the only thing that changed was the instruction, which was enough to shut the effect down. For clinicians building VR into rehabilitation, that is a design warning as much as a discovery, since a therapy asking a patient to embody an avatar may be undermined by the patient's own expectation of pain in that body part, and the individuals most likely to be affected are precisely the ones with the strongest dissociative tendencies. It also raises a practical question for chronic pain programs, phantom limb work, and stroke rehabilitation, where the virtual body a patient is asked to accept rarely matches the body they actually feel. The researchers themselves stop short of overclaiming, noting the study cannot yet separate a negative interpretation from a simple real-versus-virtual mismatch, and that restraint is worth respecting while the follow-up work is done.*

Attribution/Source(s): This peer reviewed publication was selected for publishing by the editors of Disabled World (DW) due to its relevance to the disability community. Originally authored by Hiroshima University and published on 21 Mar 2025, this content may have been edited for style, clarity, or brevity.

* Editorial additions by Ian C. Langtree.