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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 mean, how many of us guys haven't already realized that we're just lesbians trapped in male bodies.
So I'm gay, get over it.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
Does this make anybody else think of the "sim-stims" of Neuromancer?
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!
Talk about sensational headlines. The headline builds up considerable excitement then the very first line of the article squashes it completely.
I don't think it's a surprise that a person can be convinced to believe pretty much anything. I have a hard time believing how this research actually reveals any new insight.
Malkovich? MALKOVICH!
Do the test patients inexplicably end up at the New Jersey turnpike once the experiment has concluded?
True, we are subject to psychological trickery. But the test are pretty conclusive, as I actually RTFA. If a human brain can perceive an artificial body as it's own in the psychological and physiological sense, it gives researchers a great deal of more research to do. This allows us to "place" a human brain inside an artificial body and still retain full abilities without major psychological damage. That's a serious trick to perform, as once we lose that ownership of the body, behavior can be significantly modified.
"The only constant in the universe is change." - Unknown author
As reported, there have been a lot of bad moderations recently. It seems this is due to CmdrTaco and chums turning meta-moderation into a weird Digg clone.
Please CmdrTaco, just bring the old meta-moderation system back. It worked, very well, by allowing people to vote on whether a moderation was fair. The new system simply asks the user to Agree/Disagree with a post (don't fool yourselves into thinking it will be used in any other way), ergo it cannot perform the job of meta-moderation.
Brought to you by the: Discussions About Slashdot Itself are not Off-Topic, Troll, Flamebait or Redundant Dept.
Now that these scientists resolved the question of adaptability of the human psyche. Some must work on preserving the brain functionality over time and some other must work to develop the perfect cyborg container for it !!!!
Finally i will be Immortal !
There's an important distinction here - this is not mind copying, it's just perspective swapping. Mind copying would be if you were able to copy the bits of one mind in one bit of hardware (example: brain) to another bit of hardware (example: computer disk), then be able to have the mind run somewhere else. What we have here is perceptive swapping, where you just overlay a new perspective in place of a brain's inputs/outputs, giving the limited sensory perception of acting in another place to that brain's mind.
It's cool that we're making new ways for people to get new perspectives, but this ain't mind swapping by a long shot.
Ryan Fenton
No hope for test subjects who over-identify with Weighted Companion Cube.
I suppose out of body experiences are sort of like brain malfunctions. Perhaps fun if you experience one in the right state of mind (like really good weed). This might make an awesome VR game. Just 'a thought.'
=Smidge=
To be honest, I'd rather actually consume some really good weed than simulate it.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
Robert Heinlein would be so proud....
Don't you remember way back when, when you had to write papers? How the first paragraph is suppose to draw you in and give people a reason to keep reading it? Same thing here.. And it is more of a proof of concept. Can the mind accept another host instead of the body it is currently in or would it reject that body due to unfamiliar environs or even perhaps intrinsically know that the mannequin/other body is a fake? It seems the mind is pre-wired to accept this kind of situation. It is not a body-swap yet, but is just one step on a long road to body-swapping.
I posted this story to the discordian forum yesterday morning. One of the first things to be brought up was what a great advancement this will be for the teledildonics industry.
I guess that's what you get in a crowded room full of Popes. I'm glad most of us don't wear the hat all the time, that would be creepy.
The following is commentary on the OP story.
Quote from: LMNO on Today at 07:16:33 AM
I think that one of the most important aspects of Discordia (and the BIP[Black Iron Prison narrative]) is to constantly remind ourselves that we are always fooling ourselves as to what's "really out there". Always.
ALL THE TIME.
EVEN RIGHT NOW.
Quote from:Iptuous on Today at 07:23:08 AM
Fooling ourselves?
or, just limited in scope as to our perception of it?
Quote from: LMNO on Today at 07:24:24 AM
If it was just limited perception, we would see the gaps.
We make shit up to create a cohesive worldview.
Often, the shit we make up has nothing to do with anything.
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?
Utterly misleading title, wasted precious 4 minutes of my life. Thankyouverymuch.
I wonder how this would work on placing people into dummies with an amputated limb and placing amputated individuals into dummies with all their limbs.
Maybe there could be some theraputic value to this mental trickery.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The title of the paper is just: "Perceptual Illusion of Body Swapping". It only remains to traverse the small gap from "illusion" to "fact" to render the title at Slashdot (and at the Washington Post) true.
In other news: a person was triggered to have the illusion of having been transported to Jupiter. Hence, the sentence "A man was trasported to Jupiter" should be considered -at least approximately- true.
The experiment might be of interest, I don't dispute that; but come on. Wake me up when the "swapped mind" is able to command the other body.
I welcome myself as our new mannequin overlord!
Stay away from me with that stick...
-- "Oh. This guy again."
I was going to say that too. Then I remembered this isn't digg.
On April fools day they should run only stories that would exist in a comic book world. The ones we slashdotters keep waiting for...
"Scientist successfully places human brain in Ape"
"Safe and inexpensive teleportation now available"
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
I've corrected the subject line of this post to the Heinlein reference you were looking for (instead of just modding you down, which would have been rude).
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
and even feeling at home in the body of someone of the opposite sex.
After reading the article they were just simultaneously poking people with sticks...
Hmmm . . . I think there might be joke in there somewhere, but I seem to be a little slow tonight.
Or maybe I'm just not knowledgeable about the latest Fetish du Jour . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The day grows ever nearer that I may play with my very own set of boobies!
Quote from the article:
The researchers created the illusion of body-swapping by touching the stomach of both the mannequin and the volunteer with sticks
What would have been far more interesting is if they achieved the same sensation without poking the participant as well. But even then, that could be be achieved with hypnosis anyway (?)
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Nothing mythical, mysterious or mind blowing about it.
The humans in the test are simply percepting something they see done to another as done to themselves.
Its not even psychological - its neurological.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy#The_development_of_empathy
That is also why "it did not work when a non-humanoid object -- such as a chair or large block -- was used."
You can't empathize with a block of wood.
Unless it is in a form of a Weighted Companion Cube.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Related to this and the story, when I see someone of the opposite sex being sexually stimulated, I too tend to orgasm. It's amazing!
Cue hot grits joke in 3..2..1..
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
Once we get humaniform robots perfected, this could be a great boon to the disabled. Imagine being a quadraplegic, using a robot body you control with your brain to play baseball from the comfort of your basement.
Of course, before robotics gets good enough for that, we'll have exoskeletons that the disabled can wear that will negate the need for a full robot. The world is already full of cyborgs (I'm one, so's Dick Cheney, so's your grandma if she has an artificial hip).
Free Martian Whores!
To be honest, I'd rather actually consume some really good weed than simulate it.
You can somewhat simulate weed with binaural beats, but it's nowhere near as good as the real thing. That will get you feeling somewhat high.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
Why is this tagged with 'furries'?
Genius short story by James Tiptree Jr(who just had to be a male)
This is a Tiptree thread troll.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
I've been achieving the same via PornoTube for quite some time now.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Prostitution just became an issue of how well the girl can mimic the actions of the pornography you're watching. Ugly prostitutes rejoiced.
Appropriately... fitting topic... "Hard Ware"
I prefer to make LOVE, not WAR. So... Butt, Real-Doll... hear, I cum...
Butt, an asside. (please refrain from "Hello Dolly"...)
Does that mean we can have mind-body/booty transformayshun into a man-akin? Now, peephole can sex-spear-e-ence same-sex relay-shuns with or without, within and with out feeling or feeling shunned.
Butt, also, if we can carry a dummy along, then when him/her-roids become un-bare-able, we can transfer our minds/sould (and hopefully our pain receptors, or perceptive/receptive pain receptors) and transfer our asses (minds) out of the body into the new receptacle.
What becomes of two who become one? Will they be singing Hall & Oates' "Did It In a Minute" (..."And if TWO become ONE, who is the ONE TWO beCOME?")
What if something leads to ... "loose screws..."?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
"First Person Suckee"
"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."
What on-line pr0n add-dicked hasn't looked or felt around under the desk at work while looking around the monitor?
Things will be interesting if kompooters and adult enter-stain-men-t venues merge. Will they be the new "Speakeasies" of our time?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
How many pr0n stars "become" their ... counterpart... but we never see because its in the outtakes...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The mind can easily be tricked.
Phantom limb syndrome is a common problem for amputees, where pain or discomfort is felt in the limb that no longer exists.
One of the treatments for phantom limb syndrome involves using a mirror to make reflect you existing limb in such a way that it looks like you have both limbs. The person then performs certain actions such that it appears that the limb is restored and operating. Though one of the limbs doesn't exist, your brain is still wired as if it can move the limb. Once you actually view the missing limb performing these actions, the pain goes away.
Seems to me that this experiment isn't much different than replacing a phantom limb with a mirror.
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.
Well... yes. If you were expecting a quick action fix.
GITS and Masamune Shirow's manga in general need to be watched/read with some concentration.
Add to that Mamoru Oshii's direction who almost always goes of to a deep end of the psychology pool and it may seem unnecessarily complicated.
As for trash..
Try reading some of Shirow's manga. He would really get into particulars with every single little thing in his universe.
That is, before he figured out he can live off the royalties and churning out a borderline hentai calendars and art-books here and there.
There are no "beam guns" in Shirow's manga.
If a piece of technology is used there is a neat description somewhere of how and why that particular piece of technology works and what are its underlying principles.
There is almost no issue without some added bits of text with additional explanation for such cases.
Original Ghost in the Shell manga is a great example. There are about 10 pages of "notes" at the end of the book.
A great example of visionary "future tech" he also featured can be found in Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor.
In a story printed in 1992 (Drive Slave) he drew microrobots that travel through bloodstream using flagella for propulsion.
Such robots are widely researched today.
On other hand...
I fear that you have no idea what Sci-Fi is. Or Science Fiction. Or that one is primarily read, and other mostly watched these days.
GITS SAC 1, 2 and the movies are great sci-fi.
GITS manga and movies are great Science Fiction.
If nothing else, Hollywood hacks like Wachowskis ripping it off is a good indicator of its value.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I strongly get the feeling that the Slashdot and/or Slashcode developers are succumbing to feature creep, and adding things to the system just for the sake of adding them, even when the system works fine. This seems to have started after the CSS redesign.
Slashdot isn't perfect. However, it's a damn sight better than a lot of other discussion sites out there, especially the moderation system.
Please don't fuck with it when it's not broken. There are things in it that are obviously broken, such as the fact that Funny mods don't grant karma. However, fundamentally changing a system that previously worked fine is, well, stupid.
Someone in the development chain seems to have the notion that metamoderation was too hard. It wasn't. The reason for this is that the people doing metamod are already committed to making Slashdot better. They will deal with the compexities involved because due the system's limits on who can access mod / metamod, they're already used to them.
Making it "easier" by removing features simply doesn't make sense.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Dr. Henrik Ehrsson sure is basing his research career around this topic. And every time he publishes a paper basically saying the same thing as the last, the press jumps all over it as the realization of some sci-fi dream. check out the google news archive. I think the research is fine as far as it goes, but it seems very much in the neighborhood of simulator rides and dummy head recording.
"developed a strong belief that the mannequin's body was actually their own", says TFA. How is that determined/measured? Was there a test that showed people could not tell the two bodies apart? Without that information, TFA is meaningless to me who is not familiar with such experiments. Can this "belief" be described, or would I have to experience it myself?
That's ultimately what I meant, though I think the quickest fix is to grant karma to funny mods. I don't agree that funny comments are somehow less valuable than others.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This seems like a direct extension from the article a while ago explaining how tools are perceived by the brain to be an extension of the body. In this case, the mannequin is the tool in question. This is interesting, but it doesn't strike me as a huge breakthrough.
My webcomic
Just look at the guy:
http://www.venturebroswiki.com/vbwiki/Phantom_Limb
Do you really think rubbing his tummy will me him go away?
What?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I suppose out of body experiences are sort of like brain malfunctions.
If I understand it well, this is akin to the mechanisms that allow us to e.g. feel the pressure at the tip of the pencil instead of our fingertips. Or drivers expanding their perception of body to the size of their vehicle.
Our brains allow us to feel our tools as parts of ourselves. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Ignore this signature. By order.
The same things have been done with mirrors, the subjects' hands and the experimenter assistant's hands. It's so simple and common that it's been used to demonstrate cognitive mapping in undergrad classes. I did so 10 years ago.
The only new item in TFA is use of video cameras placed at eye locations and equivalent ocular presentation. In TFA they manage to do the same as has been done before, except they use a lot more of very expensive equipment. Science marches on, though not necessarily forward.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Well, it actually has been done before. And quite a long time ago. It is common to use this kind of "mental tricks" for helping people who lost a limb to adapt to the feeling of having something missing.
Sometimes, when you lose a limb (say a hand), the brain re.adapts and the areas that control the feeling of another part of the body expand to the part that controlled the lost hand. Now what happens?
You get touched on certain parts of your face, per example, but you actually feel you're being touched on your missing hand.
So medics use this kind of tricks (sometimes with mirrors) to psychologically make you feel like you had your hand again.. but instead of using a puppet, they used the reflection of your remaining hand
=)
This is not new. This has been done by hypnosis and embedded commands for quite a while now
The Tao that can be named is not the Tao
"Side effect" sounds better. "Malfunction" implies that something isn't working as it should.
This reminds me of Vilayanur Ramachandran's talk on TED: A journey to the center of your mind
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html
If you don't recall the talk, it's the one about the phantom limbs and how a simple trick helped people who had their arms amputated to stop the pain from the phantom limb.
HD Trailers
I think you a word there
Well, doesn't this bring up some philosophical questions. We're getting awfully close to figuring out how to really fool the brain, aren't we? Even if the input is a little "off", the brain seems willing to adapt to the new "normal". That's the interesting thing - it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough. That trait, combined with technological improvements, will likely lead to some amazingly appalling applications and some horrific consequences within a couple of decades.
+1 Funny, -1 Overrated resulting in a net karma loss is broken.
Troll comments which happen to be funny are still trolls.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The Ship Who Sang?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.