The experiment by neuroscientists from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet involved the participant standing up and wearing a set of head-mounted displays.
The participant was then asked to look down at her body, but instead of her real body she saw empty space.
To evoke the feeling of having an invisible body, a scientist touched the participant's body in various locations with a large paintbrush while, with another paintbrush held in the other hand, exactly imitating the movements in mid-air in full view of the participant.
"We showed in a previous study that the same illusion can be created for a single hand. The present study demonstrates that the 'invisible hand illusion' can, surprisingly, be extended to an entire invisible body," said Guterstam.
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The study examined the illusion experience in 125 participants.
To demonstrate that the illusion actually worked, the researchers would make a stabbing motion with a knife towards the empty space that represented the belly of the invisible body.
In another part of the study, the researchers examined whether the feeling of invisibility affects social anxiety by placing the participants in front of an audience of strangers.
"We found that their heart rate and self-reported stress level during the 'performance' was lower when they immediately prior had experienced the invisible body illusion compared to when they experienced having a physical body," Guterstam said.
The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.