Illusory movements induced by tendon vibration in right- and left-handed people

Exp Brain Res (2015) 233:375383 DOI 10.1007/s00221-014-4121-8

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Illusory movements induced by tendon vibration in right- and left-handed people

Emmanuele Tidoni Gabriele Fusco

Daniele Leonardis Antonio Frisoli Massimo Bergamasco Salvatore Maria Aglioti

Abstract Frequency-specic vibratory stimulation of peripheral tendons induces an illusion of limb movement that may be useful for restoring proprioceptive information in people with sensorimotor disability. This potential application may be limited by inter- and intra-subject variability in the susceptibility to such an illusion, which may depend on a variety of factors. To explore the inuence of stimulation parameters and participants handedness on the movement illusion, we vibrated the right and left tendon of the biceps brachii in a group of right- and left-handed people with ve stimulation frequencies (from 40 to 120 Hz in step of 20 Hz). We found that all participants reported the expected illusion of elbow extension, especially after 40 and 60 Hz. Left-handers exhibited less variability in reporting the illusion compared to right-handers across the different stimulation frequencies. Moreover, the stimulation of the non-dominant arm elicited a more vivid illusion with faster onset relative to the stimulation of the dominant arm, an effect that was independent from participants handedness. Overall, our data show that stimulation frequency, handedness and arm dominance inuence the tendon vibration movement illusion. The results are discussed in reference to their relevance in linking motor awareness, improving current devices for motor ability recovery after brain

Received: 26 June 2014 / Accepted: 29 September 2014 / Published online: 8 October 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

or spinal damage and developing prosthetics and virtual embodiment systems.

Keywords Tendon vibration Kinesthetic illusion

Handedness Body illusion Proprioception

Introduction

Vibrating the peripheral tendons in a physically immobile limb increases the ring rate of the muscle spindles, which alters the normal processing of proprioceptive information.When a vibration of approximately 70100 Hz is applied to a tendon of the biceps or triceps muscle of a limb that is obstructed from view, a sensation of arm displacement is generated (Goodwin et al. 1972; Gilhodes et al. 1986;Lackner 1988; Naito et al. 1999). Notably, the illusory movement of the arm can be perceived as either exion or extension, depending on the directional stretching of the vibrated muscle. Interestingly, the ring frequency of muscle...