Spurred by virtual reality (VR) users' informal reports of 'phantom touch illusion'-an indistinct sense of touch resulting from similar lifelike actions within a VR game, for example-the researchers of this new study sought to investigate how the tactile gating process would work in the absence of an actual sensory tactile signal. However, the same study also shows that tactile gating can occur in response to non-predicted input, indicating that non-specific input reduction may also come into play.
Recent work in PNAS has shown that the predictability of a self-touch pattern determines the measure of tactile gating. Their work, titled 'Phantom touch illusion, an unexpected phenomenological effect of tactile gating in the absence of tactile stimulation,' is published in Scientific Reports. However, new research by a team from Germany's Ruhr-University Bochum suggests that body schema can also play a part in tactile gating.
