The brain usually has a pretty good idea of what is part of the body and what is not--although the classic rubber hand illusion can convince people to adopt a fake hand as their own when one of their real hands is hidden from view. Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm have added a strange new twist to this experiment, persuading volunteers to believe that they have three hands rather than two. The psychologists accomplished this sensory legerdemain by placing a false rubber right hand next to the subject’s real right hand and covering both with a cloth from the wrist up (to obscure which one was connected to the body)
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