Virtual flying experience changes neural responses to seeing wings.

Source: PubMed, NCBI / U.S. National Library of Medicine

The human brain visually processes body parts in the occipitotemporal cortex (OTC), a category-selective organization proposed to reflect evolutionary salience. Using virtual reality (VR), we investigated how the OTC adapts to artificial body parts-virtual wings-that transcend evolutionary constraints. Participants underwent a week of VR training (four sessions), learning to control virtual wings via upper-limb movements with simulated visual feedback of flight. Comparing pre- and post-VR neural responses to wing images shows changes in the OTC, characterized by (1) increased bilateral wing-selective activation, (2) enhanced multi-voxel representational similarity between wings and upper limbs in the right OTC, and (3) strengthened task-dependent functional coupling (psychophysiological interaction) of wing stimuli between the right OTC and frontoparietal high-level somatosensory and motor associate regions. These findings show that the OTC incorporates illusionary effectors into body representations that transcend lower-level sensorimotor congruence, highlighting its role in the abstract, functional-semantic coding of visual inputs.