Science Tricks the Brain into Experiencing of Having Three Arms
Which Arm is Real? The human brain can't tell, so it accepts them both as the body's own. Arvid Guterstam, Valeria I. Petkova, H. Henrik Ehrsson (Karolinska Institutet) If you've ever wondered what it might be like to have an extra arm, a team of Swedish researchers would love to show you. Scientists at the medical university Karolinska Institutet were wondering the same thing, so they set up an experiment to find out. It turns out it's possible to experience having three arms at the same time. How the mind perceives the body has long been a vexing question for scientists both psychological and physiological, and the commonly accepted line of thinking said that the brain more or less innately understands the blueprint of the body. As such, our brain shouldn't be able to experience having more limbs than are naturally there. But in a series of simple--if somewhat crude--experiments, the Karolinska team...