VR: it’s all in the mind
p2pnet news | Off Topic:- Speaking of virtual unreality, back in the psychedelic 70s, tripping – bringing on an out of body experience – was no big thing.
Unfortunately, sometimes, it also included extremely negative experiences such as attempting to fly off tall buildings ——– with no safety net below.
Today, altered states don’t necessarily call for chemicals and, “Using virtual-reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences – the sensation of drifting outside of one`s own body – in ordinary, healthy people, according to studies being published today in the journal Science,” says Times Online.
Or as the author, H. Henrik Ehrsson, puts it in Science:
I report an illusion in which individuals experience that they are located outside their physical bodies and looking at their bodies from this perspective. This demonstrates that the experience of being localized within the physical body can be determined by the visual perspective in conjunction with correlated multisensory information from the body.
‘Volunteers feel that they have left their bodies’
Two Science articles describe separate experiments and you’ll need a subscription to read them, but, “With a combination of virtual-reality goggles and tactile stimulation, researchers in Britain and Switzerland induced volunteers to feel that they have left their bodies to view themselves from a few metres away,” says the Times story, going on:
The results could eventually have commercial, medical, scientific and military applications. Similar virtual-reality technology could help surgeons to operate on patients in distant hospitals, and scientists to control hu-manoid robots on the Moon or Mars. Though scientists behind the experiments said they had no ties to military research, the work could be used to improve remote-controlled weaponry.
Henrik Ehrsson, of University College London, who performed one of the two studies published in the journal Science, said they shed important light on the nature of consciousness.
In his study, the story continues, “volunteers wore goggles, and cameras were placed 2m (6ft) behind the subject, with the feeds connected to the subject`s eyes. The participant thus saw an image of his or her back. Dr Ehrsson stood behind the subject and held two rods. He used one to prod the subject and the other to jab underneath the camera. The participants said they felt they were sitting where the cameras were placed, and that the figure they were watching was another person or a dummy.”
‘Physically and visually stimulated’
Bigna Lenggenhager and Olaf Blanke, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology researchers, “ran a separate study using similar methods,” says the CBC.
This time, “participants stood in front of a camera while wearing visual display goggles, and were both physically and visually stimulated by having a highlighter pen rubbed against their backs and their virtual backs,” says the story, going on:
“When the researchers moved the participants, turned off the video display and then asked them to return to their former spots, they also overshot their former positions, standing closer to where their virtual bodies were.”
Also See:
virtual unreality – Is virtual life too much like real life?, August 24, 2007
Times Online – Why being out of the body is all in the mind, August 24, 2007
Science – The Experimental Induction of Out-of-Body Experiences, August 24, 2007
CBC – Scientists use VR to simulate out-of-body experiences, August 23, 2007
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