Exchange of minds

The staff of the medical faculty of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm caused the volunteers a complete illusion of being in someone else's body. Depending on the conditions of the experiment, the subjects perceived as their own body of another person, or a mannequin.

To cause such an effect, scientists first needed to "deceive" the participants' senses. The subjects were asked to wear a helmet-mounted (HMD) monitor, which received an image recorded in real time by cameras mounted on the "head" of the dummy.

Then, for several minutes, the subject received light thrusts with a pointer to various areas of the body, observing on the monitor exactly the same thrusts that the dummy received. After a few minutes of such manipulations, the illusion of being in someone else's body became so strong that the volunteers felt expressed anxiety when they began to perform dangerous actions with the dummy, for example, to hold sharp objects on it.

The reaction to threatening actions with a dummy was recorded by measuring the electrical conductivity of the participants' skin. Scientists managed to achieve a similar effect in an experiment involving two people. At the same time, the subject and his "double" could be of different sexes, be in different poses and have different height or physique. The only thing that the researchers failed to achieve was to force the participants to associate themselves with inanimate objects unlike the human body.

According to Swedish scientists, the unusual effect they have achieved can be used in the treatment of a number of mental disorders associated with impaired perception of the image and proportions of one's own body, in particular, anorexia.

The research report (“If I Were You: Perceptual Illusion of Body Swapping”) is published in the journal PLoS ONE.

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Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru05.12.2008