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March 2014 eNewsletter
News(Download a New Physiology Lab Each Month)
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Experiment
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An amazing illusion was discovered by Pennsylvania psychologists approximately ten (10) years ago. They found that they could convince people that a rubber hand was actually their own hand just by putting it on a table in front of them while stroking it in the same manner as their real hand.
This is now known as the "Rubber Hand Illusion." It was not only a mind-blowing party trick, it was also hugely important in understanding how sight, touch and "proprioception," the sense of body position, combine to create a convincing feeling of body ownership, which is one of the foundations of self-consciousness (Nature, vol 391, p 756).
The understanding of the feeling of “body ownership” has been explored further using increasingly odd and crazy illusions. The rubber hand illusion test has really inspired people to move on to discover all sorts of methods to test these foundations. One neuroscientist, Henrik Ehrsson, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, is one of many researchers who have taken the illusion and created a whole new set of "body illusions" that have the ability to mess with our sense of self in strange and disturbing ways.
The ultimate goal of these tests is to gain an understanding of how the brain represents the body. It has to do with the idea of multisensory integration; your eyes, your skin, your muscles and nerves. The brain combines all of them in just the right way to perceive your entire sense of “body ownership”.
Though the Rubber Hand Illusion is only one of many of these types of ‘tests’, it is easy to perform in the lab and is lots of fun. All you really need is a fake hand of some kind (an inflated rubber glove may even work), a box, a two-way mirror and two small paintbrushes. The iWorx equipment takes this illusion a step further and actually allows the researcher to examine the physiological functions that can occur while the illusion is happening. These include pulse and heart rate, galvanic skin response, muscle activity using electromyograms, and temperature.
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More information on kinesiology and targeted muscle EMG, as well as additional external physiology-related links. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| See iWorx New TA Teaching Kits Schedule a Demo Contact us if you are interested in a demonstration in your lab and we'll set up a visit when our Physiology Teaching Specialists are in your area. The TA kits are designed for the ultimate in ease-of-use, enabling instructors and students to focus on the lab rather than getting sidetracked by tedious set-up, confusing lab components and software. Visit our new Web site and learn more about iWorx new TA Teaching Kits and schedule a demo today. |
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| Trade-Up to the New TA Teaching Kits iWorx customers can take advantage of a generous offer to trade-up to iWorx new TA teaching kits. If you are an iWorx customer in North America, contact us at 800-234-1757 or submit the form here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Upcoming Events Experimental Biology 2014 April 26 - 30, 2014 San Diego, CA American Psychological Society HAPS 2014 |
Physiology Laboratory Cardiac Pressure-Volume
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