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Scientists Achieve Mental Body-Swapping
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Dec 05, 2008 01:29 PM
from the put-yourself-in-my-place dept.
from the put-yourself-in-my-place dept.
SpaceAdmiral notes the news that scientists have succeeded in convincing experiment subjects that a mannequin's body is their own, and even feeling at home in the body of someone of the opposite sex. The effect could prove useful in virtual reality applications and in robot technology. Here's the paper on PLoS ONE.
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Ghost in the Shell (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ghost in the Shell (Score:5, Funny)
/cry
Please don't introduce thoughts like this into my brain when talking about hot female characters... I'll never be able to look at her the same way again!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
She repeatedly mentions she has no interest in a male body (generally when talking to Batou), we also get a couple flashbacks to various points in her past where she is still in a female cyber body.
Don't worry, your fapping is perfectly safe from your homophobic fears :)
Re:Ghost in the Shell (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry, your fapping is perfectly safe from your homophobic fears :)
I'm guessing you were joking, since I certainly have been joking about this, but I do feel the need to point something out seriously. Not being comfortable with someone you were attracted to turning out to be male isn't homophobia in the least. Homophobia is having negative reactions towards other people who are gay. Not being comfortable with gayness for yourself, though, is perfectly acceptable. Why choose such a negative-laced word?
Parent
Re:Ghost in the Shell (Score:4, Insightful)
the term you are thinking of is 'internalized homophobia', and it too is incorrect in this case. Internalized homophobia would be if you felt bad about your attraction BECAUSE it was same-sex, male to female attraction, regardless of the bits involved, is heterosexual by its very nature and would therefor not fall under homophobia, internalized or otherwise.
being uncomfortable/hostile/bad reaction of your choice about someone being a different gender or sex then you expected would be transphobia.
the more you know (insert shooting_star.gif here)
but I would dispute the "perfectly acceptable" part of your point too... many people commit suicide every year because they are unable to accept their sexuality, many more are assaulted, raped or murdered by others who lash out because of their internalized homophobia. Call me a leftist nutter, but anything that gets thousands of people killed yearly is not something I would tag as "perfectly acceptable".
Parent
Re:Ghost in the Shell (Score:5, Insightful)
but I would dispute the "perfectly acceptable" part of your point too... many people commit suicide every year because they are unable to accept their sexuality, many more are assaulted, raped or murdered by others who lash out because of their internalized homophobia. Call me a leftist nutter, but anything that gets thousands of people killed yearly is not something I would tag as "perfectly acceptable".
I won't call you a leftist nutter, but I will call you wrong. There are many things in our world which are "perfectly acceptable", but get people killed because people misuse them or react badly to them. I'm sure more than one person has committed suicide because of their unrequited love for someone, but that doesn't make being in love unacceptable, nor does it make non-reciprocity of love unacceptable. It just means that it's unfortunate that someone couldn't cope with something adequately, and made a bad choice about how to resolve the issue.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ghost in the Shell is trash.
The first one is your typical hyper-complicated (to make it seem intelligent when it is in fact simply ridiculous) anime with ridiculous robots and sexy female combatants.
It's great for action and style, but terrible for sci-fi. Anyone who says it's deep or has any meaning is either delusional, or has never seen any sci-fi ever.
Everything after (Innocence, Stand Alone Complex, whatever else they crank out) is utter trash, on the level of SAW sequels.
Sorry.
Re:Ghost in the Shell (Score:4, Funny)
You *could* just admit you didn't understand it rather than whining about it.
Parent
Re:Ghost in the Shell (Score:5, Funny)
I do understand it.
The problem is that it makes no sense,
Lol.
Do you have that on a T-shirt?
You could make a fortune selling them if you got Paris Hilton to model one.
Parent
Re:Ghost in the Shell (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone who says it's deep or has any meaning is either delusional, or has never seen any sci-fi ever.
Sorry. Sci-Fi is not limited to ponderous, arrogant prattling by over-educated shut-ins. It also includes flash, style, and simple characterization.
GitS is as deep as anything in its media could possibly be. "A person who is not sure if she is a person but is becomes indisinguishable from another person who is not a person but wants to be."
Hard to think of a deeper plot. If you can point to one, go ahead.
Parent
Re:Ghost in the Shell (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem I have is that GitS does it poorly, and a lot of people see GitS without/before seeing Bladerunner/reading DADoES?. They then proclaim it to be the best, and think everything stole from it.
I don't agree that GitS is poorly done. But I do agree that folks need some perspective before they toss around terms like "steal." Not only should they have a better idea of history, but they should readdress the concept of inspiration and the very nature of story telling. On top of that, while I agree there's similarities in the two works (if you count DADoES and Bladerunner as the same), I find that they attack the theme from fairly different directions.
But GitS fans tend to have some serious blinders on, and, as evidenced by some of the replies to my post, are extremely defensive of the movie/movies/series/manga/etc.
It might have something to do with the inflammatory nature of your post. :) Using terms like "trash" and other subjective declarations are likely to invoke similarly emotional responses - whether the fan base is overly defensive or not.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
At the same time, it makes me wonder even more if the Major's original organic body may in fact have been male, with little to no adaptation discomfort after the procedure...
If you read the original manga and got the pages to fill in the abridged portions from the English version, then you wouldn't wonder about it. The Major was originally female.
It's one of many themes about what defines our humanity amidst the cybernetic changes that the manga successfully explores (albeit circuitously in many cases) where all of the animated versions failed miserably (as in the original manga is not "hyper-complicated trash").
The specific sequence for this is one in which the Major is en
Quite a letdown... (Score:5, Interesting)
After reading the article they were just simultaneously poking people with sticks...
perhaps now that you have that insight you can "mentally swap" the disappointment I'm feeling.
Re:Quite a letdown... (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, good news! You've succeeded!
Parent
Re:Quite a letdown... (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, good news! You've succeeded!
I think we're on to something!
Tomorrow's headline:
Article misrepresenting "mental body swapping" leads to mental body swapping!
Parent
Re:Quite a letdown... (Score:5, Funny)
After reading the article they were just simultaneously poking people with sticks...
One experiment involved using the researchers themselves. Another experiment used mannequins found in the dumpster behind a department store. They also mention using chairs and blocks of wood as test equipment. Is it just me, or does it sound like scientific research in Sweden is ridiculously underfunded?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Somebody should mod you insightful, even though you didn't intend that.
It is pretty common for researchers to be this resourceful and scavenge test objects, lab equipment and sometimes research subjects in this way.
First of all, the research budgets are tight and it is unbelievably difficult to get funding for anything not having a marketable product on the table already. The idea that research needs to be done *before* you can have an (ideally patentable) product is often lost to the bean counters.
Second,
Re:Quite a letdown... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you've ever done an experiment like this (there are smaller scale versions), they are very weird. I can't imagine a full body experience.
Example:
The one I have done involves sitting behind someone, eyes closed, and having your nose stroked (by a third party) while you stroke someone else's nose in front of you. After a few seconds, your brain "clicks" and you feel like you have an incredibly long nose. This is because of the feedback loop where your brain feels something on your nose and your finger simultaneously, and your mental body image just changes instantly.
Parent
Re:Quite a letdown... (Score:5, Funny)
You just gave "Reach Around" a whole new meaning in my mental dictionary.
Thanks!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The one I have done involves sitting behind someone, eyes closed, and having your nose stroked (by a third party) while you stroke someone else's nose in front of you. After a few seconds, your brain "clicks" and you feel like you have an incredibly long nose. This is because of the feedback loop where your brain feels something on your nose and your finger simultaneously, and your mental body image just changes instantly.
Are you sure it was a nose you were stroking?
Re:Quite a letdown... (Score:5, Funny)
The one I have done involves sitting behind someone, eyes closed, and having your nose stroked (by a third party) while you stroke someone else's nose in front of you. After a few seconds, your brain "clicks" and you feel like you have an incredibly long nose.
Now I know what to do to feel like I have an incredibly long penis. But I'm not quite sure if it's worth it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've had my mind think an entire building was part of my body.
The setup was that I took a nap in an awkward position so that when I woke up and looked "down" towards where I expected my body to be, I instead saw a beam that was part of the architecture. For a fraction of a second I had the sensation that that beam was part of my body.
It was the briefest second, but it was one of the strangest things I've ever felt.
Amazing waste of time and money (Score:5, Funny)
So I'm gay, get over it.
Simulation (Score:4, Interesting)
First Person Shooter (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope, but it did occur to me that they've essentially reproduced the First Person Shooter -- what dedicated player hasn't "ducked" away from incoming fire, or tried to peer around the corner of the monitor when trying to see around a corner?? Same behaviour, really -- putting yourself in the place of your onscreen avatar's viewpoint to the point that you lose track of which body you actually inhabit, and react as if the avatar is real and YOU.
Parent
Not exactly like TV (Score:5, Interesting)
I just glanced through the study's report, and will read in detail later (it's rather long). There was an episode of The Prisoner [wikipedia.org] where a scientist had a gizmo with funny metal hats that transferred consciousness [wikipedia.org] to another person.
This is nothing like that.
There was another episode that was like that. In The Schizoid Man [wikipedia.org], as Wikipedia puts it, "Number Two replaces Number Six with a duplicate to weaken the real Six's sense of identity." Not exactly like this study, but closer.
In this real-world study, one of the tests was that the subject is stimulated exactly like the "double"; the subject's abdomen is tickled exactly like the other person's body. I suspect that hypnosis plays a part in it, even if the researchers weren't aware they were hypnotizing the subject.
You can hypnotize someone by (IIRC) having them lay on their backs with their eyes closed, and lightly touch their forehead. Ask "do you feel that?" Do this three or four times and without touching their forehead, if you ask if you did they will still say "yes".
"There are four lights!" -Captain Picard
Re:Not exactly like TV (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm suprised this is news. Wasn't there just recently an article about the set of nerves that fire the same when seeing someone else perform an action as doing it yourself?
Heck, I imagine anyone who has worked with waldos/tele-operated robotics has felt a sense of transference to the mechanical portion. After using a waldo for several hours a day for a few weeks, I swear I developed a sense of touch in a device with no force feedback, but it was most likely just my sympathetic reaction to seeing the waldo come into contact.
Parent
Sensationalism at its best. (Score:2)
Talk about sensational headlines. The headline builds up considerable excitement then the very first line of the article squashes it completely.
I don't think it's a surprise that a person can be convinced to believe pretty much anything. I have a hard time believing how this research actually reveals any new insight.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Its actually important research where cognitive science is involved -- the precise mechanism that translates from a set of impulses entering the brain to the sense of self and awareness of both position and body isn't well understood.
We know, sure, that the world we live in is a mental projection that our brains assemble from a lot of, frankly, very coarse and non-specific input. We mentally fill in a lot of details. Figuring out how much you have to simulate to cause perception to switch is important, as i
Malkovich (Score:5, Insightful)
Do the test patients inexplicably end up at the New Jersey turnpike once the experiment has concluded?
Cyborg (Score:2)
Now that these scientists resolved the question of adaptability of the human psyche. Some must work on preserving the brain functionality over time and some other must work to develop the perfect cyborg container for it !!!!
Finally i will be Immortal !
Perspective swapping, not mind swapping. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's an important distinction here - this is not mind copying, it's just perspective swapping. Mind copying would be if you were able to copy the bits of one mind in one bit of hardware (example: brain) to another bit of hardware (example: computer disk), then be able to have the mind run somewhere else. What we have here is perceptive swapping, where you just overlay a new perspective in place of a brain's inputs/outputs, giving the limited sensory perception of acting in another place to that brain's mind.
It's cool that we're making new ways for people to get new perspectives, but this ain't mind swapping by a long shot.
Ryan Fenton
Aperture Science (Score:5, Funny)
No hope for test subjects who over-identify with Weighted Companion Cube.
Over-reaching headline (Score:5, Funny)
"Scientist successfully places human brain in Ape"
"Safe and inexpensive teleportation now available"
Soul migration? Nah.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The researchers created the illusion of body-swapping by touching the stomach of both the mannequin and the volunteer with sticks
What would have been far more interesting is if they achieved the same sensation without poking the participant as well. But even then, that could be be achieved with hypnosis anyway (?)
Its called empathy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing mythical, mysterious or mind blowing about it.
The humans in the test are simply percepting something they see done to another as done to themselves.
Its not even psychological - its neurological.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy#The_development_of_empathy [wikipedia.org]
That is also why "it did not work when a non-humanoid object -- such as a chair or large block -- was used."
You can't empathize with a block of wood.
Unless it is in a form of a Weighted Companion Cube.
The mind is funky! (Score:4, Interesting)
The mind can easily be tricked.
Phantom limb syndrome is a common problem for amputees, where pain or discomfort is felt in the limb that no longer exists.
One of the treatments for phantom limb syndrome involves using a mirror to make reflect you existing limb in such a way that it looks like you have both limbs. The person then performs certain actions such that it appears that the limb is restored and operating. Though one of the limbs doesn't exist, your brain is still wired as if it can move the limb. Once you actually view the missing limb performing these actions, the pain goes away.
Seems to me that this experiment isn't much different than replacing a phantom limb with a mirror.
really not very new... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have beside me a book entitled Phantoms in the Brain [amazon.co.uk] (VS Ramachandran, foreword Oliver Sachs) first published in 1998, which suggests you should "have your friend stroke identical locations on both your hand and the dummy hand synchronously while you look at the dummy. Within seconds you will experience the stroking sensations as arising from the dummy hand". It goes on to describe how you can also experience touch sensations as arising from tables and chairs.
Incidentally I'd recommend this book for anybody interested in perception; it's a readable introduction into the very strange perceptual phenomena that can be encountered by people with rare forms of brain damage, some of which give valuable insights into the way the mind works.
dupe, dupe, dupe -- in all senses of the word (Score:3, Informative)
A Minor Step Sideways (Score:3, Interesting)
The same things have been done with mirrors, the subjects' hands and the experimenter assistant's hands. It's so simple and common that it's been used to demonstrate cognitive mapping in undergrad classes. I did so 10 years ago.
The only new item in TFA is use of video cameras placed at eye locations and equivalent ocular presentation. In TFA they manage to do the same as has been done before, except they use a lot more of very expensive equipment. Science marches on, though not necessarily forward.
Re:I thought I saw this already (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
What the heck happened to meta-moderation? (Score:5, Insightful)
As reported [slashdot.org], there have been a lot of bad moderations recently. It seems this is due to CmdrTaco and chums turning meta-moderation into a weird Digg clone.
Please CmdrTaco, just bring the old meta-moderation system back. It worked, very well, by allowing people to vote on whether a moderation was fair. The new system simply asks the user to Agree/Disagree with a post (don't fool yourselves into thinking it will be used in any other way), ergo it cannot perform the job of meta-moderation.
Brought to you by the: Discussions About Slashdot Itself are not Off-Topic, Troll, Flamebait or Redundant Dept.
Parent
Re:What the heck happened to meta-moderation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, head honchos of Slashdot, revert to the old style metamods and user pages or at least allow us the option to control what cruft is grafted to our user page. Slashdot would lose a lot of cred if it degenerated into digg.
Parent
Re:What the heck happened to meta-moderation? (Score:4, Informative)
I wasn't meta-moderating quite that frequently, but I did try to make time to do it at least once a week. Since the new system was put in place I hardly bother any more.
As far as the moderation system, I abandoned that a couple of years ago. There is so much abuse that goes unchecked that I just browse at -1 and skip past the comments that I think are trolls or flame bait or whatever. I've also unchecked the "willing to moderate" box in my preferences, although that has more to do with just not having the time most days to skim the summaries and comments, let alone read the articles and make an honest attempt to do a good job of moderating.
The user page changes are just bizarre, and the page is different every time I visit it (which isn't very often lately). They seem to be trying to get to the point where your comments appear with the summary of the article they were attached to (leading to the 'bloat' you noted). The last time I visited there were summaries from article that I never commented on, so they had no relevance to me. They seem to be still developing this new user page, but rather than wait until it is finished, they have essentially made us all beta testers.
Why am I given the choice to rate my own comments '+' or '-'? Am I really going to rate my own comment '-'? Also, the style sheet seems to be messed up, at least in Firefox. Rather than the white text on a green background they were using when they first made the change (ala Idle), it is now white text on a two-tone background that fades from grey to white, making the text unreadable. In IE, it's white text on a green background. I don't know, maybe I've done something to Firefox, but it wasn't like this the other day.
Maybe I'm just resistant to change, but I can't see anything positive about these changes.
Parent
Re:What the heck happened to meta-moderation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Dear Developers (Score:5, Insightful)
I strongly get the feeling that the Slashdot and/or Slashcode developers are succumbing to feature creep, and adding things to the system just for the sake of adding them, even when the system works fine. This seems to have started after the CSS redesign.
Slashdot isn't perfect. However, it's a damn sight better than a lot of other discussion sites out there, especially the moderation system.
Please don't fuck with it when it's not broken. There are things in it that are obviously broken, such as the fact that Funny mods don't grant karma. However, fundamentally changing a system that previously worked fine is, well, stupid.
Someone in the development chain seems to have the notion that metamoderation was too hard. It wasn't. The reason for this is that the people doing metamod are already committed to making Slashdot better. They will deal with the compexities involved because due the system's limits on who can access mod / metamod, they're already used to them.
Making it "easier" by removing features simply doesn't make sense.
Parent
I Will Fear No Evil (Score:4, Informative)
I've corrected the subject line of this post to the Heinlein reference [wikipedia.org] you were looking for (instead of just modding you down, which would have been rude).
Parent
Re:We're Almost There! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a good question.
I suspect that if it can be done for one's sex, it can be done for one's "species".