How to leave your body

	Tweet

Leave your body and shake hands with yourself, gain an extra limb or change into a robot for a while. Swedish neuroscientist Henrik Ehrsson has demonstrated that the brain’s image of the body is negotiable. Applications stretch from touch-sensitive prostheses to robotics and virtual worlds.

Ask a child if their hands belong to them and they will answer, “Of course!” But how does the brain actually identify its own body? And why do we experience our centre of awareness as located inside a physical body?

In a series of studies, neuroscientist Henrik Ehrsson of the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet has shown that the brain’s perception of its own body can alter remarkably. Through the coordinated manipulation of the different senses, subjects can be made to feel that their body suddenly includes artificial objects or that they have departed their body entirely to enter another. His experiments have been published in Science and other leading scientific periodicals and journals, and have garnered considered international attention. 

"By clarifying how the normal brain produces a sense of ownership of the body, we can learn to project ownership onto artificial bodies and simulated virtual ones, and even make two people have the experience of swapping bodies with one another,” says Dr Ehrsson.

The research addresses fundamental questions about the relationship between mind and body, which have been the topic of theological, philosophical and psychological discussion for centuries but which have only recently been accessible to experimental investigation. The key to solving the problem is to identify the multisensory mechanisms through which the central nervous system distinguishes between sensory signals from the body and from its environment.

The research may have important implications in a wide range of areas, such as developing hand prostheses that feel more like real hands and the next generation of virtual reality applications, where the sense of self is projected onto computer-generated ‘virtual bodies’.

Researchers are currently looking into what kind of bodies the brain can perceive as its own. The self can, for example, be transferred into a body of another sex, age and size, but not into objects such as blocks or chairs. One ongoing project with potential applications in robotics is examining if the perceived body can be shrunk to the size of a Barbie doll; another is studying if the brain can accept a body with three arms.

“This could give paralysed people a third prosthetic arm, which they would perceive as real,” says Dr Ehrsson.

###

Download press images: ki.se/pressroom

For further information, contact:
Dr Henrik Ehrsson PhD
Department of Neuroscience
Phone: +46 8 524 872 31
Email:

Sabina Bossi, press officer
Tel: +46 8 524 860 66 or +46 70 614 60 66
Email:

Karolinska Institutet is one of the world’s leading medical universities. Its mission is to contribute to the improvement of human health through research and education. Karolinska Institutet accounts for over 40 per cent of the medical academic research conducted in Sweden, and offers the country’s broadest range of education in medicine and health sciences. Since 1901 the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has selected the Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine.

###

Contact: Sabina Bossi

46-70-614-6066
Karolinska Institutet

RELATED STORIES:
Childhood Sun Exposure May Lower Risk of MS   Revealing brain damage from battlefield to playing field   MRI scans reveal brain changes in people at genetic risk for Alzheimer’s   Rett syndrome can also strike males   Bladder-Brain Link May Point to Better Treatments for Sleep, Attention Problems   Simple Eye Scan Opens Window to Multiple Sclerosis   Promising multiple sclerosis treatments on the way   Staring, sleepiness, other mental lapses more likely in patients with Alzheimer’s   For nutrition info, moms like the Web best   Early prognosis after ‘mini-stroke’ better in women   New direction for epilepsy treatment   Brain study shows the waiting is the hardest part

Comments

[ + Post Your Own ]

Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not Armenian Medical Network's stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

There are no comments for this entry yet. [ + Comment here + ]