Imagine picking up a long stick and poking something far away you can almost feel the object through the stick, right? That’s called proxy touch, and it’s your brain treating the tool like an extension of your body. This might sound simple, but it’s actually a mind-blowing example of how flexible our brain is when it comes to perception.
Researchers have also found that proxy touch works even in virtual spaces. In some VR experiments, people felt a phantom touch illusion they felt like they were touching a virtual object, even though their real hand wasn’t touching anything. Their brain was fooled by what they saw in the headset and treated the virtual hand as their own.
Proxy touch shows that touch isn’t just about direct skin contact. The brain combines visual input, body awareness, and movement to build the feeling of touch even when nothing is physically touching you. This is why it’s used in advanced prosthetics and robotic surgery tools. In one study, people using a grabber tool began to treat it like part of their own body after just a few minutes (Maravita & Iriki, 2004). The brain literally rewires its body map to include the tool!
Maravita, A., & Iriki, A. (2004). Tools for the body (schema). Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(2), 79–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2003.12.008
hi! thank you for mentioning VR, I didn't even connect that these were attached concepts before. Haptics and controller vibrations in game are so immersive and can definitely work as proxy touch as it emits simulated vibrations that make you feel like you're interacting with an object, despite it being virtual. This also reminds me of how VR phantom touch can be related to the out-of-body experience, as you mentioned phantom touch and how you can see and feel sensations of impending objects or stimulus by just viewing it from an out of body perspective.
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