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Synchronized Virtual Reality Heartbeat Triggers Out-of-Body Experiences
Zothecula writes "New research demonstrates that triggering an out-of-body experience (OBE) could be as simple as getting a person to watch a video of themselves with their heartbeat projected onto it. According to the study, it's easy to trick the mind into thinking it belongs to an external body and manipulate a person's self-consciousness by externalizing the body's internal rhythms. The findings could lead to new treatments for people with perceptual disorders such as anorexia and could also help dieters too."
So, when does this technique get declared illegal, like all drug-based methods of altering mental states (other than alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine)?
And the worms ate into his brain.
I'm putting this out there:
Tactile suit that stimulates you in various points, synchronised to the vision of someone else being stimulated in the same way.
Who is that someone? Someone of the opposite gender? A furry animal? Who knows?
Psychologist advised.
Any tennis or squash player knows that you treat the racquet as an extension of your body. Likewise a musician treats the instrument as an extension of their body and that as an extension of their mind and emotions. Feeling one with your instrument is of great benefit to playing, and it is a similar 'illusion'.
A common misperception, according to what is taught in classical disciplines that involve serious mind training, like raja yoga or taiji, is that we are not our bodies, nor is our mind and consciousness really seated in our heads. After significant self-development, that illusion eventually dissipates.
What we perceive to be our body is that part of reality that appears to be strongly correlated to our minds. Thus it is easy to mistake ourselves to be our bodies, and our minds for our brains.
The problem with much of this research is that the researchers have not developed a detailed understanding of their own mind before trying to experimentally analyse someone else's. This is akin to trying to study an advanced maths paper when you haven't learned maths past high school level: the result is naive researchers whose qualifications and professional position give an illusion of greater research competence than they have.
John_Chalisque
There's another application that is being overlooked: Porn videos. Now you can have an "in another body" experience. -_- And to think, we thought we'd have to wait for holodecks....
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Not every trait or implication of traits that we have is based on some evolutionary advantage. Some of it is simply accidental.
Technoli
The brain has the ability to remap and reroute it's perception of itself. This is useful if you ever loose a leg or arm, your brain can think of your body differently to get past it. Sometimes this does not work correctly (phantom limb pain). There have also been some attempts in robotics to have the robot recalculate the best form of movement through simulation when one of its legs is damaged.
Your brain also has the ability to imagine future scenarios, even impossible ones. Some people have had dreams where they were flying of their own power. There is not really any biological cause that I know of that could cause you to fly, sometimes the brain just has a good imagination.
This news item and the gizmag.com link both confuse the study's method of tricking the body into being confused about where the body is and the near-death experience of being outside the body completely.
More fundamentally, the process of growing up is a constant adjustment for changing anatomy. Not being able to make that adjustment would result in an incredibly clumsy adult.
but the machine may lead to religious experimenting with grave consequences.
Suppose this VR apparatus is extensively tested, and some of the test subjects having out-of-body experiences see things that would be impossible to see from the (real) body's location. What then?
Like, the subject is lying down in the left side of the room, there is a divider in the middle, and through the VR goggles he is tricked into thinking his body is in the right side of the room. Now place an object in the right side of the room in such a way that it's impossible for the body lying down in the left side of the room to see it. Can the subject accurately describe the object? This is kind of perception is what US Army/SRI's remote viewing program claims they were able to achieve. However they didn't have these goggles and had no way to repeatably and reliably achieve an OOB state, it all depended on individual ability.
Currently all of science and medicine consider OOB and religious experiences to be hallucinations and that all perception and thought exist in the brain exclusively. If repeatable experiments prove this false, it would open the floodgates.
Oh, and as for this being an already known phenomenon -- what's really happening* is that your left cortex, which focuses on detail and anchors the "me" in the surge of signals your brain processes, gets overridden by the right cortex, which tends to ignore localities (like your body) and instead focus on piecing together the bigger picture. So if your right cortex takes over driving your consciousness, your body itself is no longer the predominant frame of reference, triggering OBE.
* best theory on what's really happening anyway -- one that's been posited and tested over the past decade by neuroscientists.
Then we would have a repeatable phenomenon which we could investigate (assuming we can exclude plain fraud). However I'm willing to bet that this won't happen.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If you could do that there is a nice man that will give you one million dollars.
I personally think the more likely outcome is that he gets to keep his money.
Just match your breathing and heart rate to the doctor, you will then be giving the prostate exam!
..um, not sure that's any better..
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Because Randi's silly challenge is meaningless nonsense?
To clarify my point, I'll offer my own challenge: One Million Dollars to empirically show that it's possible for someone to dream while asleep.
I know that quite a few people claim to dream while they're asleep, but they're clearly either delusional or money-grubbing attention seekers. I mean, if people really could dream, it would be a cinch to win that million dollars, right? I'm not picky. I'll give you every fair advantage. I'll even work with you to find a test protocol that is acceptable to both of us.
Now, a million dollars is a lot of money, so you'll first have to get some media attention before you'll be allowed to apply. I don't have time deal with every mentally ill person who thinks they can dream while they're asleep! I've got to reserve my resources for the big-name crooks and charlatans. Once you make a proper application and it has been accepted and approved, you'll need to pass a preliminary test. You can arrange that with a local university or skeptical group. (Pending my approval, of course.) If you pass that, you can apply to take the official challenge.
Who would turn down a million dollars just to do something they claim not only comes easily, but that they do every night! Even if you don't want or need an extra million dollars, surely you can think of a worthy charity!
Don't doubt my credentials. I'm exceptionally qualified to judge your challenge attempt as I can juggle a bit and know some really keen magic tricks.
That no one has yet to even pass the preliminary challenge speaks volumes!
Required reading for internet skeptics