Previous research has linked the amount of pain to the specific location of the stimulation in external space. For example, crossing the arms reduces the intensity of pain when receiving painful stimuli on the hand.

The current study uses the thermal grill illusion (TGI, an alternating pattern of warm and cold stimuli, that causes a strange burning and painful sensation) and combined this with crossing the fingers to investigate whether nociceptive sensations depend on the somatotopic or spatiotopic thermal organisation.