People with schizophrenia have a weakened sense of body ownership, a finding that suggests movement therapy may be useful in treating those suffering from the mental disorder. The experiment, reported in the journal PLoS One, measured the strength of body ownership of 24 schizophrenia patients and 21 matched control subjects by testing their susceptibility to the “rubber hand illusion” or RHI. This tactile illusion, which was discovered in 1998, is induced by simultaneously stroking a visible rubber hand and the subject’s hidden hand.
