Pinocchio illusion

The Pinocchio illusion is an illusion that one's nose is growing longer, as happened to the literary character Pinocchio when he told a lie. To experience the illusion, a vibrator is applied to the bicep tendon while one holds one's nose with the hand of that arm. The vibrator stimulates muscle spindles in the biceps that would normally be stimulated by the muscle's stretching, creating a kinesthetic illusion that the arm is moving away from the face. Because the fingers holding the nose are still giving proprioceptive information of being in contact with the nose, it appears that the nose is moving away from the face.

See also

• Body Image
• Out of body experience

External links

• New York Times: Experiment Gives Illusion of That Shrinking Feeling (2005)