William Atkins
Thursday, 11 December 2008 23:53
Science -
Biology
Page 1 of 3
Swedish neuroscientists have produced the phenomenon called “body-swap illusion” in experimental volunteers. A male, for instance, can experience the movements of a women’s hands like they were his own.
Valeria I. Petkova and
H. Henrik Ehrsson, both from the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden), published the article “
If I Were You: Perceptual Illusion of Body Swapping” in the journal
PloS ONE on Tuesday, December 9, 2008.
The findings were also reported at the November 17, 2008
annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, which was held between November 15 and 19, 2008, in Washington, D.C.
Their abstract states,
“The concept of an individual swapping his or her body with that of another person has captured the imagination of writers and artists for decades. Although this topic has not been the subject of investigation in science, it exemplifies the fundamental question of why we have an ongoing experience of being located inside our bodies.”
The researches studied the
“perceptual illusion of body-swapping.”
They stated that the
“Manipulation of the visual perspective, in combination with the receipt of correlated multisensory information from the body was sufficient to trigger the illusion that another person's body or an artificial body was one's own.”
And,
“This effect was so strong that people could experience being in another person's body when facing their own body and shaking hands with it.”
How did the Swedish researchers set up their experiment? Please read page two.
