From The Economist’s article on artificially-induced out-of-body experiences:
Dr Ehrsson did it by making his volunteers look at themselves from behind. He sat them in a chair and asked them to wear virtual-reality goggles, which work by projecting a picture in front of each eye. Behind the chair there were two video cameras adjusted so that they were at the level of the volunteer’s eyes. The left-hand camera sent its picture to the left eye of the goggles; the right-hand camera sent its picture to the right eye. The subjects could thus see their own backs, in stereo, as though they were sitting behind themselves.
Dr Ehrsson then tested how touch is combined with vision to locate the self. When he tapped his volunteers on their chests at the same time as he tapped the air at chest-height below the cameras, they reported feeling that the core of their identity inhabited the camera’s position. They were, in other words, out of their own bodies, and they considered their real selves—seen through the goggles—as another person. When, however, he prodded the chest and the air at different times, that illusion immediately dissolved.
More on “the self” from The Economist.
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