Becoming Barbie

Lying in bed late at night I have always wondered one thing. What it would be like to be Barbie of course. All heavenly thanks to the Scientific American because I am one step closer to wrapping my head around this illusive experience that I have only touched upon in my wildest fantasies and finest dreams. The article reviews research done on how people view the physical world. Jealous as always, I envied participants as they were able to take place in a self-displacement technique as part of a research study. The technique allowed participants to perceive themselves as being the size of either a giant or a Barbie doll.

To feel like Barbie you have to do some neuroscience. The article really shows how interconnected the brain really is. The researches put video cameras over participants eyes as they were lying down. The people either viewed through the camera lens a giant or a barbie doll when they looked down at their own body. To make the trick work and cause self-displacement, they watched the fake hand get touched by the researcher while their own hand was simultaneously touched giving the illusion that they had taken on a new body.

After the trick was set up the participants were asked to grab an object. When they were under the illusion they were the size of a Barbie doll they would try to grab an object with a larger grasp than if the participant were trying to do the task by themselves with their normal perception. This shows they perceived themselves smaller than they really were. This made me think about how our vision and touch are connected with object recognition. After being shown an image and touched in the right way people actually perceived objects as bigger or smaller. Their dorsal visual processing stream is affected by this change in awareness as seen when the participants changed the size of their grasp. They are actually spatially visualizing an object differently because of the way that they see themselves. All because of visual and tactile sensory inputs!

With such an easy trick our spatial reasoning can be altered. The world we live in is really only how we perceive it. Even stranger is that the way we see the world can be changed and manipulated fairly easily. So here I go. I am about to strap on my fabulous plastic dress that is collecting dust in the back of my closet, throw on my newly purchased video camera glasses, and become the best Barbie I can be. Thank goodness for neuroscience.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=neuroscience-of-barbie