Many stories have been based on the idea of two (or more) characters getting their minds and bodies swapped. Often these involve comedic sequences as the pair try and fail to act like each other, but a new study suggests this may not be so difficult after all.
Swedish researchers used virtual reality to make pairs of friends think they’d swapped bodies. After only a few minutes, the participants’ brains had been tricked into believing this illusion.
The pairs rated personality traits like talkativeness and confidence both before and during the experiment. While swapped, the values they gave themselves changed to be more like how they’d judged their friend.
The experiment only ran for a few minutes, so the speed at which this happened is surprising. It suggests that your sense of identity is strongly tied to your body, and that when this changes, your brain changes with it.
This article was published in Issue 45 of Double Helix magazine (https://www.csiro.au/en/Education/Double-Helix). Copyright for this article is held by CSIRO.
Lachlan Writes Science 