Production of proprioceptive errors with induced hypnotic anesthesia

Abstract

The present study assessed the ability of Ss to localize their noses with the forefinger of their dominant hands. This was accomplished while S had his eyes closed and while the limb performing the task was or was not hypnotically anesthetized. In performing this task with an anesthetized limb, 2 error types were observed. The first involved a localization error of missing the nose location. A second error involved an increased amount of time required to find the nose location. An inverse relationship was found to exist between these error types such that a large localization error was associated with a short latency period while a small localization error was associated with a long latency period. Neither error type was evident when hypnotic anesthesia was absent.