LONDON: Well, not exactly. But a team of neuroscientists has created the perceptual illusion of having an invisible body, and shown that the feeling of invisibility changes our physical stress response in challenging social situations.
The power of invisibility has long fascinated society, and inspired the works of many great authors and philosophers. This includes well-known literature such as the myth of Gyges’ ring in Plato’s dialogue The Republic and the science fiction novel The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. And let’s not forget Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.
And while these ideas are the work of fiction, recent advances in materials science indicates that invisibility cloaking of large-scale objects, such as the human body, may soon become a reality.
In this latest study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, the Swedish team describes a perceptual illusion of having an invisible body, bringing us one step closer to the dream of invisibility. The study examined the illusion experience in 125 participants, all wearing a set of heat-mounted displays. To evoke the feeling of having an invisible body, the researchers touched the participant’s body in various locations with a large paintbrush while, with another paintbrush held in the other hand, they exactly imitated the movements in mid-air in full view of the participant.
“Within less than a minute, the majority of the participants started to transfer the sensation of touch to the portion of empty space where they saw the paintbrush move and experienced an invisible body in that position,” lead author Arvid Guterstam explained in a statement. “We showed in a previous study that the same illusion can be created for a single hand. The present study demonstrates that the ‘invisible hand illusion’ can, surprisingly, be extended to an entire invisible body.”
