Volunteers have been allowed to experience what it’s like to disappear in an experiment that echoes the HG Wells story The Invisible Man.
The research didn’t use invisibility cloaks – it was an illusion created using 3D virtual reality headsets that projected an image of empty space when participants looked down at their own bodies.
Central to the trick was stroking each volunteer with a paint brush, which in the display seemed to be touching an invisible surface. Researchers then explored the psychological effects of invisibility – just as HG Wells did in his 1897 novella about a power-mad scientist who makes himself invisible and is eventually driven insane.
The real-life experiment suggested that far from being psychologically damaging, invisibility might prove therapeutic for people suffering from social anxiety disorder.
In the study, the 125 volunteers were each exposed to a socially stressful situation by being made to stand in front of a group of strangers. Their heart rates and stress levels turned out to be lower when they were first rendered “invisible”.
“These results are interesting because they show that the perceived physical quality of the body can change the way our brain processes social cues,” said lead scientist Arvid Guterstam, from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Previous studies using similar techniques have shown it is possible to convince volunteers that they own a rubber hand, or even a mannequin’s body.
