Becoming another person
Body swapping is a common occurrence in science fiction or fantasy, the two characters exchange one-to-one to each other’s body, followed by the comical or meaningful storylines of dealing with the confusions when transforming into another individual. For a long time, swapping bodies in real life was believed to be impossible, or at least far away from today’s technology.
However, a recent experiment run by neuroscientist Pawel Tacikowski at Karolinska Institute in Sweden offers an arguably closest possible method to ‘’live as someone else”. By wearing VR goggles, 33 pairs of friends were able to swap bodies in a perceptual illusion. With the goggles showing live feeds of the other person’s body from a first-person perspective and simultaneous touches to both participants on corresponding body parts to let them feel what they saw. To prove that the illusions truly worked, the researchers threatened the friend’s body with a prop knife and found that the participant broke out into a sweat as if they were the one being threatened.
Ourselves and our bodies
Through the experiment, the researchers found some interesting connections between our self or sense and our perceptions of the bodies we inhibit. “People who suffer from depression often have very rigid and negative beliefs about themselves that can be devastating to their everyday functioning. If you change this illusion slightly, it could potentially make those beliefs less rigid and less negative.” says Tacikowsk.
The research also showed effects on memory: participants in the illusion generally performed worse on memory tests, proving that people are better on remembering things related to themselves.More significantly, participants whose self-perception shifted the most significantly towards that of their friends did better in the memory tests. The researchers inferred that this could be due to their “self-incoherence” being lower, Which means there was less gap between the sense of self and the physical body.
I found this experiment innovative and purposeful. Is it possible that we further apply this ‘’body swapping’’ technique in different sectors? For instance, can we ease the pain of people suffering from depression by letting them experience another kind of life? Or can we fix domestic quarrels by showing the couples different perspectives so that they can “stand in each other’s shoes”?
Source:
Pawel Tacikowski, Marieke L. Weijs, H. Henrik Ehrsson (2020).Perception of Our Own Body Influences Self-Concept and Self-Incoherence Impairs Episodic Memory
https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(20)30619-2?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2589004220306192%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
Hi Ju Chun,
I have to agree with you that this is very interesting! However, I wonder whether or not the idea of using body swapping for depressed people could have adverse effects. If you make people ‘experience’ another life, won’t it trigger them to want to escape more regularly and indirectly forget to battle their own scars? The idea could be promising but may also cause a somewhat ‘dystopian’ future whereby people like to experience different perspective or lives on a regular basis. What do you think about this?
Kind regards,
Olivia van Aalst
Hi Ju Chun,
The title of your post instantly reminded me of the Netflix show “Altered Carbon”, which showcases exactly the idea you are talking about but in a more extreme manner. Instead of VR, your “soul” is captured inside a spine disc called a “stack” which can be inserted into the neck of any body. This allows for the transfer of individuals across bodies and time.
It is interesting to read that researchers are experimenting with this idea, albeit in a much more primitive state then the Netflix show.
While this development has the potential to bring positive experiences to for example disabled people, one has to consider potential dangers and ethical issues. What if instead of joyful encounters, negative experiences are being developed for torture purposes? People might get irreversibly traumatized. How would regulations look like? Is it even possible to regulate this technology?
Have you thought about these possible negative effects?
Kind regards,
Dennis Vissenberg
Pleasant to read! Personally, I never heard of the possibility to do body swapping using VR, thank you for showing me! It sounds very interesting to “become” another person only using a technical device. I can imagine it to be very scary to see yourself from a different perspective and to enhance your perception about yourself and others. It seems like it has a lot of potential, especially in health care. I also like the idea of solving a dispute by changing your perspective. But I wonder if it is really suitable to use body swapping on a regular basis, will this maybe cause more harm than good for patients or also in normal situations? I think the risks are still a bit uncertain (think of personality). Also, in my opinion, the diffusion of body swapping will heavily depend on the diffusion of VR in general, which (at the moment) still might be too early for personal use, as VR glasses are generally not really integrated in our daily lives yet.