Experiment points way to mind-body disengagement
She hasn’t left, yet. Scientists are perfecting techniques to separate mind from body.
A Swedish neuroscientist at the University College of London announced today that he has reproduced the out-of-body experience often reported by stroke victims, epileptics, drug users and those who have been through near death experiences.
University H. Henrik Ehrsson’s experiment sheds light on how people are able to experience phantom pains in missing limbs, for example.
Ehrsson in his most recent experiment, published by the journal Science, today, used a virtual reality headset and camera to cause 12 test subjects to view their own bodies as someone else’s.
Ehrsson has also shown how a subject’s brain can tricked into thinking that a rubber hand is a part of his body, causing the subject to react to a threat to the false hand as if it were his own (see link and expert, below).
The UCL experiment also shows how the controllers of virtual worlds such as Second Life might be able to blur the distinction between reality and fantasy with devices that literally separate consciousness from the human body.
The consequences of that disembodiment would be catastrophic. “If the distinction fails, the animal might try to feed on itself and will not be able to plan actions that involve both body parts and external objects,” Ehrsson told the BBC several years ago.
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So watch as food and pharmaceutical companies begin to seek SAFETY Act protections for their arfid-tagged goods, and use the “DHS certified” seal (left) as a selling point.
