Just another illusion box

The smallest man in the world tries out the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus’ new MIRAGE, delivered and installed in person by Roger last week (it’s all in the service you know). The Malaysia version has a secret new component, making it suitable for certain kinds of brain imaging. More on that when the experiments are finished... Meanwhile, Helen has been using MIRAGE in Australia so hopefully we’ll have some pictures from that soon.

Written by Dr. Roger Newport

Thinking Outside the Box

The latest MIRAGE publication, which has just come out in Perception (Link), takes MIRAGE technology out of its box allowing us to stretch the whole arm opposed to just the hand a wrist, as well as viewing the body from 3rd person perspective. This opens up possibilities for many new illusions incorporating the whole body. So watch this space!

The arm stretching illusion

Figure adapted from Preston and Newport (2012) published in Perception.

Malaysia Grant Success.

Dr Kirsten McKenzie, from the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, has just been awarded a grant from Malaysia’s Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation to investigate somatosensory disorders and bodily misperceptions.

When we feel a sensation, such as pain, we assume it is caused by something happening to or within out body, but - there are many clinical cases in which an individual’s somatic experience is found to be a misrepresentation of bodily events. Most of the time our misperceptions are not a problem, and we are not aware that they have happened, but they can become problematic if, for example, we interpret normal bodily sensations as discomfort or pain.

Mistakes or misperceptions of bodily events are often associated with what are called Medically Unexplained Symptoms (MUS); situations in which patients experience what feels like very real pain or disability, but has no physical cause, and it has been suggested that MUS may account for up to a third of all visits to health-care providers. In this situation, it seems that there may be something wrong with the way the brain interprets information coming from the senses, but as yet very little is known about the processes underlying the development and maintenance of these misperceptions.

This study, which begins later this month, will use several new techniques, including the MIRAGE virtual-reality system in conjunction with Electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate when and how these illusory sensations are interpreted in the brain.

We are particularly interested in the time-course of these illusions. Whether these illusory sensations are generated at an early sensory processing stage, or at a later decision making stage will have a great influence upon both the understanding of sensory processing, and possible treatment options for MUS and somatosensory disorders.

Written by Dr. Kirsten McKenzie

From Box Files to the British Science Festival: Part Four

I’ve been reminded (several times) that I haven’t updated this for a while, so here, at last, is Part 4 of Box Files to British Science Festival.

Part 4:

Mark 3 fell down like a three year old child’s tower of bricks and we realised that my incompetence with a saw was no match for years of experience with slow-grown Swedish pine. The trip to IKEA bought us Mark 4, which consisted of a bookcase frame that we hoped wouldn’t fall down quite so easily as my previous efforts. We also replaced the projector hanging from the ceiling with a large 28 inch imac computer, which was a bit of a nightmare to begin with because it meant that anything we tried to do on the screen was upside down and back to front (due to having to view everything in the mirror). At the same time, the School of Psychology very kindly took a punt on me and gave me enough money to buy a proper camera, one that could take images at 60 frames a second and feed them straight into the computer. This, coupled with a software upgrade, finally allowed me to do what I’d dreamt of all along: take live video feed of the real hand, present it in the same place as the real hand, and then add left or rightward shifts to its visual location. The IKEA bookshelf was starting to get a bit wobbly by this time, due both to the weight of the imac computer and me banging my head against it in frustration at having to work upside down. So, when I saw an old workshop cabinet about to be skipped, I took it along to one of the techies and asked him to modify it for me. This he did with the aid of a size 10 boot that he used simply to kick the back off. ‘There you go’, he said, ‘That should do it.’ And it did. Mark 5 was born: the first proper prototype MIRAGE which still lives under a desk in the lab as a safe place to crawl in an earthquake. I have a soft sport for Mark 5: not only was it indestructible, but it also triggered the realisation that I’d been making the wrong thing all along.

Next time:

Next time: MIRAGE, Multisensory illusions, Manchester, Mark 6 and the Media.

Written by Dr. Roger Newport

Lab updates

Latest Project Finishes

Our most recent finger stretching arthritis project (funded by the Dunhill Medical Trust) has come to an end so we would like to thank all the people that took part for us. We’re still ploughing through all the data, but we can tell you that the results, overall, look pretty similar to last time with pain being reduced in around 3/4 of those with arthritic pain in their hands. We’ll keep you posted, so keep checking back for updates.

Image of a patient's hand being stretched

Helen to stay in the lab

In additional news - we received some fantastic news last week that Helen Gilpin, our hard-working researcher for the latest arthritis project, has been granted a Ph.D. studentship at Nottingham so that she can continue her research over the next three years, starting in September. This is great news for the lab as it means that we can start testing some of our new illusions as well as continuing our research into the mechanisms behind different kinds of pain.


Coming Soon! Part 4 of From Box Files to the British Science Festival and the Spring Quarterly Illusion...Supernunerary Limbs.

MIRAGE finally arrives in Australia!

Only a month after eventually remembering to pick up the package, Excess Baggage have finally delivered MIRAGE to Tasha in Australia. We haven’t heard whether it’s arrived in one piece yet, but here’s hoping that we’ll soon be reading about some new great illusions and experiments from their lab.

MIRAGE lab Australia

Dr. Tasha Stanton from the Neuroscience Research Australia group has been visiting the MIRAGE lab in Nottingham for the last 3 weeks. The aim of her visit was to learn how to use MIRAGE before taking one back to Australia with her. This picture was taken at the UCAS open day held at Nottingham yesterday (15/02/12) where she was demonstrating the illusions to prospective students and their families. The best way to learn how to use MIRAGE properly is to be thrown into a live public demo. She did brilliantly.

Tasha Stanton from the Neuroscience Research Australia at the University of Nottingham UCAS open day