Archive for Friday, August 24, 2007

Goggles create out-of-body sensations

August 24, 2007


Exploring the connection between our mental and physical perceptions of ourselves, scientists on Thursday said they used virtual reality goggles to induce out-of-body sensations in healthy volunteers.

In simple experiments carried out by teams in Switzerland and England, test subjects looking at video images of themselves projected through the goggles reacted as if their own bodies had been touched when their virtual selves were stroked or poked.

Tricked by the illusion, participants reported feeling that their consciousness had drifted from their real bodies into their virtual ones.

The research helps explain the odd sense of floating outside their bodies that people sometimes experience after traumatic events, such as car accidents. Out-of-body experiences have also been reported in cases in which a critical area of the brain is damaged, either from stroke, epilepsy or cancer.

The studies, published in the journal Science, "call into question the axiom that everything you are is anchored in your body," said Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, director of the center for the brain and cognition at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the current research.

Instead, Ramachandran said, "what you regard as you is really a transient construct created by the brain from multiple sensory sources."

In England, Dr. H. Henrik Ehrsson of University College London, asked 12 volunteers to wear virtual reality goggles while they sat in an empty room. A camera behind each participant projected an image of their backs. Thus, the participants viewed their own backs from the perspective of someone sitting behind them.

Ehrsson stroked each participant's chest with a stick, carefully keeping his arm and the stick out of the camera's view. At the same time, he moved his other arm in front of the camera then dropped it down as if it were moving to rub the subject's virtual chest.

The subjects saw nothing happening to the image of themselves projected in the goggles. Yet, they could feel the stick on their own bodies. The result was a disorienting mismatch between the subject's tactile and visual senses.

When touched, participants reported they had the experience of drifting outside their own bodies toward the direction of the camera and viewing themselves from behind.

To test the illusion further, Ehrsson wielded a hammer, swinging it in front of the camera. Even though the participants felt nothing, they flinched and registered fear through sensors attached to their skin.

In the Swiss experiment, Dr. Olaf Blanke of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne asked seven subjects to wear virtual reality goggles while standing in an empty room. A camera behind each person projected three-dimensional images in front of them. Thus, each participant felt as if they were standing behind themselves.

When their backs were stroked in sync with the virtual image, participants reported feeling that their consciousness had been transported to the body in front of them.

The experiment was repeated with a virtual image of a human dummy and a large rectangular object. Participants' sense of self floated into the dummy, but not into the object.


matahari 9 years, 7 months ago

Reminiscent of Ralph Fiennes' movie "Strange Days" yes? (remember? Juliet Lewis, Angela Bassett, in the futuristic play on 'intimate headgear' that simulated the actual being IN the movie you are watching and feeling hearing, and experiencing on tape?

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