By experimenting with virtual reality avatars, a group of European researchers found that seeing the world through someone else’s eyes is possible—and it can change how we think. By tricking subjects’ brains into thinking they were inhabiting the body of a child, the scientists could actually alter how people perceived objects in their environment.
Several earlier studies have suggested that virtual reality can let a person “own” a body that isn’t theirs; for instance, people experience physiological changes such as heart rate deceleration in response to a threat to their avatar in a virtual world, just as they would in real life. However, whether or not this “ownership” extends to the way that a person perceives the surrounding environment hadn’t yet been explored.
via Ars Technica
Image: NASA
