We Have A 'Force Field' Around Our Bodies And Here's How You Can Feel It

You know what your personal space is. Uninvited strangers invading it invoke an immediate sense of unease. A bird flying over but too close to your head may cause you to reflexively duck. It’s like we don’t just end where our bodies end, but a little bit beyond. Now researchers have figured out a way to make you "feel" the invisible bubble that wraps around you. In a new study published in the journal Cognition on June 24, neuroscientists at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm describe how they did this using an altered version of the so-called rubber hand illusion. In the classic version of the rubber hand illusion, a person is shown a fake rubber hand placed in front of them while their own hand is hidden behind a screen. If both real and fake hands are simultaneously stroked by a brush for a few minutes, the person's brain starts to accept the fake hand as part of the body. To test this, just bring a knife or hammer close to the fake hand and watch how someone reacts. Here’s a video: In the new experiments, the researchers repeated this procedure but never actually touched the rubber hand. Instead, they applied brushstrokes in mid-air above it. Simultaneously, they stroked the participant’s hidden real hand with real touch. A few minutes later, the participants started to feel the rubber hand was their own. What’s more, they started to sense what felt like a “magnetic force” or a “force field” between th...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news