Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Your GPS has gone bad

Ever tried to guess what letter someone was writing on you back using the tip of their finger?
I presume that you know how you can do that?

Indeed there is a map of you whole body somewhere in your brain. But the interesting part is that it isn't like an unalterable ink & paper kind of map, it's more of a puzzle where you can rearrange the pieces at will; nevertheless what you have leanred in you life makes it difficult to consciously do it: your mind has to be trick into it.

Here is an experiment to show you how: sit in front of a friend of yours, blindfolded. Then ask another friend to hold up your index and point it towards your sitting friend's nose, ask him then to put it closer and closer until it's actually touching it, then make that friend use your finger to tap the sitting down friend's nose at frequent but irregular intervals, and then do the same movement with his finger on your nose (both have to be perfectly synchronised). At one point you will be thinking that your nose is your friends nose, the one a couple of feet away.

Click on the linked blog-post title to find out more & go a little further.