Mug & mirror trick lets brain fool hands
Not only does your brain handle complex decisions for you, but it also hides information from you about how it’s making those decisions, say researchers.
When we pick up objects, like a mug of coffee, we use visual information to anticipate how to move—such as compensating for more weight on the side of the mug away from our fingers.
When researchers showed participants a mirror image of the object they were lifting, their brain overrode the actual sensory data from their hands and switched where they felt the weight.
“People still could not ignore the visual information,” says lead author Yangqing ‘Lucie’ Xu of Northwestern University. “In fact, the effect even works on us, and we designed the experiment!”
Full story at Futurity.
Photo credit: Martin Cathrae/Flickr
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