英國倫敦大學(xué)學(xué)院等機(jī)構(gòu)的研究人員在最新《科學(xué)公共圖書館·綜合》（PLoS ONE）網(wǎng)絡(luò)期刊上報告說,，他們設(shè)計了一套虛擬現(xiàn)實系統(tǒng),，可使男性受試者感到擁有一個虛擬的女性身體。
領(lǐng)導(dǎo)研究的斯萊特教授說,，一個人的大腦是如何認(rèn)知自己身體的問題一直受到科學(xué)界關(guān)注,，這項研究說明，只要令視覺和觸覺協(xié)調(diào)一致,，可以使男性受試者感到擁有虛擬女性的身體,。相關(guān)技術(shù)除了應(yīng)用于科學(xué)研究外，還有望在醫(yī)療領(lǐng)域幫助那些對自身軀體認(rèn)知失常的病人,，此外也可用于娛樂等領(lǐng)域,。
受試者被要求戴上一個虛擬現(xiàn)實頭盔，頭盔中顯示的是一間虛擬的房屋,，屋里有一名年長女性和一名年輕女孩,，年長女性正在撫摸年輕女孩的手臂,。
在受試者熟悉這個虛擬環(huán)境后，頭盔中顯示的內(nèi)容被切換成女孩的視角,，當(dāng)受試者低頭看自己時，映入眼中的會是這名女孩的身體,，如果在這個虛擬環(huán)境中照鏡子,，也會看到這名女孩的樣子。與此同時,，當(dāng)虛擬的年長女性觸碰女孩手臂時,，受試者的手臂上也被施加了相似的觸覺。這樣,，受試者大腦收到的視覺和觸覺信號得到協(xié)調(diào),，都與虛擬的環(huán)境一致。
沉浸在這種環(huán)境中一段時間后,，受試者報告說他們感到一種錯覺,，似乎自己擁有的就是這名虛擬的女孩的身體。而客觀上對受試者心率的測量也顯示,，在虛擬環(huán)境中年長女性突然打了女孩一巴掌的時候,，受試者的心率也相應(yīng)出現(xiàn)了變化。(生物谷Bioon.com)
生物谷推薦原文出處：
PLoS ONE doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010564
First Person Experience of Body Transfer in Virtual Reality
Mel Slater1,2,3*, Bernhard Spanlang2,4, Maria V. Sanchez-Vives1,5, Olaf Blanke6
1 Institució Catalana Recerca i Estudis Avan?ats (ICREA), Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, 2 Facultat de Psicologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, 3 Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, United Kingdom, 4 Departament de LSI, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, 5 Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain, 6 Brain-Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
Background
Altering the normal association between touch and its visual correlate can result in the illusory perception of a fake limb as part of our own body. Thus, when touch is seen to be applied to a rubber hand while felt synchronously on the corresponding hidden real hand, an illusion of ownership of the rubber hand usually occurs. The illusion has also been demonstrated using visuomotor correlation between the movements of the hidden real hand and the seen fake hand. This type of paradigm has been used with respect to the whole body generating out-of-the-body and body substitution illusions. However, such studies have only ever manipulated a single factor and although they used a form of virtual reality have not exploited the power of immersive virtual reality (IVR) to produce radical transformations in body ownership.
Principal Findings
Here we show that a first person perspective of a life-sized virtual human female body that appears to substitute the male subjects' own bodies was sufficient to generate a body transfer illusion. This was demonstrated subjectively by questionnaire and physiologically through heart-rate deceleration in response to a threat to the virtual body. This finding is in contrast to earlier experimental studies that assume visuotactile synchrony to be the critical contributory factor in ownership illusions. Our finding was possible because IVR allowed us to use a novel experimental design for this type of problem with three independent binary factors: (i) perspective position (first or third), (ii) synchronous or asynchronous mirror reflections and (iii) synchrony or asynchrony between felt and seen touch.
Conclusions
The results support the notion that bottom-up perceptual mechanisms can temporarily override top down knowledge resulting in a radical illusion of transfer of body ownership. The research also illustrates immersive virtual reality as a powerful tool in the study of body representation and experience, since it supports experimental manipulations that would otherwise be infeasible, with the technology being mature enough to represent human bodies and their motion.
