Want a virtual body? Here's some proof of concept

PLoS ONE - 5.12.10 (Editor: Mark A. Williams, Macquarie University, Australia)

Normally when something strikes our body we feel it at the same place that we see it. When normal correlation between two sensory streams is changed, for example, by seeing a plausibly located rubber hand touched while simultaneously feeling the touch on our out-of-sight real hand, the brain apparently engages in a re-evaluation of probabilities and assigns ownership to the visible rubber limb.

These methods have also been used to produce illusions of body morphing, adding supernumery limbs to the body, and out-of-the-body experiences. In conjunction with brain-imaging techniques these manipulations can provide insight into the brain areas involved in body representation. While the vast majority of work in this field has shown that it is possible to incorporate physical objects or video images of these into the body representation, it has also recently been shown that the same methods work with entirely virtual objects.

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