Feelings of unrealistic body parts are related to deficits in human information processing and can occur as a part of schizophrenic disorders or phantom sensations after amputation (Koide, 2008; Goller, in press). Experimentally induced sensoric illusions like rubber hand illusion (RHI) (Botvinik & Cohen, 1998) may help to understand basic information processing and could give new ideas for treatment or the rehabilitation process.

Factors that are related to modulate sensoric illusions during movement may help to develop new intervention strategies in the rehabilitation of illusory symptoms.

The goal of this study was to review the factors affecting persistence of the RHI effect during movement.

We selected 13 keywords and searched in the following www.dimdi.de/ data bases (CCTR93, CDAR94, CDSR93, DAHTA, DAHTA, EA08, ED93, EM00, EM47, HG05, KP05, KR03, ME00, ME60, PI67, PY81, TV01, TVPP). A total of 160 articles were found. Duplicates were removed and the remaining list was filtered with the objective to explore the influence of active or passive movement during experimentally induced RHI. Then we identified six articles which experimentally examined persistence of RHI during active or passive movements.

Results indicate that RHI are maintained during active or passive movements due to visual and temporal congruency. During active movements the RHI is more stable or global than in passive movements or during tactile stimulation.

Factores like visual and temporal congruency are related to maintain RHI and are discussed in the rehabilitation of phantom sensations or symptomes of schizophrenic disorders.