Recent advances with so-called meta-materials have shown that a practical invisibility cloak might one day be possible. But a new study has approached the scenario from the other direction, asking what it would feel like to be invisible. The answer, it turns out, is it would make us feel more confident.
The research was carried out using an extension of the classic rubber-hand illusion. In this experiment, a participant views a dummy hand being stroked with a brush, while also feeling a similar brush stroking his real hand, which is hidden behind a curtain. If the brush-stroking he is viewing on the rubber hand is synchronized with the stokes on his real hand, a powerful illusion can be produced; that the dummy hand is his own hand.
A number of interesting variations on this basic experiment have been demonstrated. For instance researchers at Royal Holloway have shown that inducing this sense of ownership of a darker-skinned hand subsequently reduces implicit racial biases in Caucasian participants. A further elaboration of this basic effect uses virtual-reality goggles to change the visual perspective of a participant, so as to induce the sensation that his entire body has been “swapped” with a mannequin, or even another person.
Powerful Illusion
The illusion works because of the way that the brain integrates information from different senses, and the powerful role that sensory information can have in guiding perception. The effect can be boosted by the use of drugs such as ketamine, which can lead to very powerful sensations of ownership of the rubber hand.
