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Scientists Achieve Mental Body-Swapping
SpaceAdmiral notes the news that scientists have succeeded in convincing experiment subjects that a mannequin's body is their own, and even feeling at home in the body of someone of the opposite sex. The effect could prove useful in virtual reality applications and in robot technology. Here's the paper on PLoS ONE.
This experiment opens an interesting possibility in the field of full body replacements, so far a topic purely in the realm of sci-fi, anime and cyberpunk. At the same time, it makes me wonder even more if the Major's original organic body may in fact have been male, with little to no adaptation discomfort after the procedure...
Ok, I was absolutely pumped because the subject line of this story made it sound like they successfully transplanted a brain or something...
After reading the article they were just simultaneously poking people with sticks...
perhaps now that you have that insight you can "mentally swap" the disappointment I'm feeling.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
I just glanced through the study's report, and will read in detail later (it's rather long). There was an episode of The Prisoner where a scientist had a gizmo with funny metal hats that transferred consciousness to another person.
This is nothing like that.
There was another episode that was like that. In The Schizoid Man, as Wikipedia puts it, "Number Two replaces Number Six with a duplicate to weaken the real Six's sense of identity." Not exactly like this study, but closer.
In this real-world study, one of the tests was that the subject is stimulated exactly like the "double"; the subject's abdomen is tickled exactly like the other person's body. I suspect that hypnosis plays a part in it, even if the researchers weren't aware they were hypnotizing the subject.
You can hypnotize someone by (IIRC) having them lay on their backs with their eyes closed, and lightly touch their forehead. Ask "do you feel that?" Do this three or four times and without touching their forehead, if you ask if you did they will still say "yes".
"There are four lights!" -Captain Picard
Free Martian Whores!
Nope, but it did occur to me that they've essentially reproduced the First Person Shooter -- what dedicated player hasn't "ducked" away from incoming fire, or tried to peer around the corner of the monitor when trying to see around a corner?? Same behaviour, really -- putting yourself in the place of your onscreen avatar's viewpoint to the point that you lose track of which body you actually inhabit, and react as if the avatar is real and YOU.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I have beside me a book entitled Phantoms in the Brain (VS Ramachandran, foreword Oliver Sachs) first published in 1998, which suggests you should "have your friend stroke identical locations on both your hand and the dummy hand synchronously while you look at the dummy. Within seconds you will experience the stroking sensations as arising from the dummy hand". It goes on to describe how you can also experience touch sensations as arising from tables and chairs.
Incidentally I'd recommend this book for anybody interested in perception; it's a readable introduction into the very strange perceptual phenomena that can be encountered by people with rare forms of brain damage, some of which give valuable insights into the way the mind works.