Synchronized Virtual Reality Heartbeat Triggers Out-of-Body Experiences 183
Zothecula writes "New research demonstrates that triggering an out-of-body experience (OBE) could be as simple as getting a person to watch a video of themselves with their heartbeat projected onto it. According to the study, it's easy to trick the mind into thinking it belongs to an external body and manipulate a person's self-consciousness by externalizing the body's internal rhythms. The findings could lead to new treatments for people with perceptual disorders such as anorexia and could also help dieters too."
Evidence that body-identification is illusion (Score:5, Insightful)
A common misperception, according to what is taught in classical disciplines that involve serious mind training, like raja yoga or taiji, is that we are not our bodies, nor is our mind and consciousness really seated in our heads. After significant self-development, that illusion eventually dissipates.
What we perceive to be our body is that part of reality that appears to be strongly correlated to our minds. Thus it is easy to mistake ourselves to be our bodies, and our minds for our brains.
The problem with much of this research is that the researchers have not developed a detailed understanding of their own mind before trying to experimentally analyse someone else's. This is akin to trying to study an advanced maths paper when you haven't learned maths past high school level: the result is naive researchers whose qualifications and professional position give an illusion of greater research competence than they have.
Re:And the survival-selection hypothesis would be. (Score:4, Insightful)
More fundamentally, the process of growing up is a constant adjustment for changing anatomy. Not being able to make that adjustment would result in an incredibly clumsy adult.
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and as for this being an already known phenomenon -- what's really happening* is that your left cortex, which focuses on detail and anchors the "me" in the surge of signals your brain processes, gets overridden by the right cortex, which tends to ignore localities (like your body) and instead focus on piecing together the bigger picture. So if your right cortex takes over driving your consciousness, your body itself is no longer the predominant frame of reference, triggering OBE.
* best theory on what's really happening anyway -- one that's been posited and tested over the past decade by neuroscientists.
Re:Videos become illegal.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude made a fair witticism about the government's overwhelming tendency to legislate down things that are not understood in the interests of 'protecting us' from ourselves, especially where drugs aside from the big 3 are concerned. You respond with 'Keep crying, pothead.' which is so short-sighted it hurts. People like you don't even think two steps beyond themselves and keep themselves locked in an ignorant little hole where they already know all the answers that they ever need. You also vote along party lines every time because you are part of the RIGHT 'club' and people in your club are all on the same side (except when you really start looking at policies and political opinions and voting history and all those little pesky details that you don't concern yourself with).
There is a reason that the majority of the nation has agreed that Marijuana has medicinal functions even though the federal government vehemently denies any medicinal use is possible. This is because they don't want to look like fucking morons for filling our prisons full of non-violent marijuana users so that we can all get buttfucked by the tax man to feed and house people who, most of the time, WERE ALREADY DOING THIS THEMSELVES