XRAYHEAD GARDEN（2025）

XRAYHEAD Garden creates a powerful sensation as if an experimenter’s hand is penetrating the participant’s skull with tactile and audio feedback. It builds on the earlier XRAYHEAD, which produced the illusion of seeing a skeleton inside the head. The illusion is generated by the experimenter touching a smart-skull model with LEDs synchronized to the participant’s head surface. The primary innovation is the ability to open the skull along the forehead line and the inclusion of a compact sound instrument with a light sensor. This system modifies the sound’s timbre based on hand penetration depth, enhancing the illusion of sound emanating from inside the head. To evaluate its effectiveness, we conducted two experiments. In the first, 86\% of participants reported experiencing an illusory sensation of skull intrusion and a lingering object inside the head. The second experiment showed that audio-tactile integration significantly strengthened the sensation of sound originating from one’s head (magnet-head illusion).