Stimulus modality, also called sensory modality, is one aspect of a stimulus or what we perceive after a stimulus. Some sensory modalities include: light, sound, temperature, taste, pressure, smell. The type and location of the sensory receptor activated by the stimulus plays the primary role in coding the sensation. All sensory modalities work together to heighten stimuli sensation when necessary. -wikipedia-
M. Philippa e.a. (2003-2009) Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands
reflex zn. ‘onwillekeurige reactie’
Nnl. eerst de vorm reflexus ‘onwillekeurige reactie (op een zenuwprikkel)’ in door den reflexus van de prikkeling der gevoelszenuwen [1840; WNT], dan reflectie ‘id.’ in de reflectie van eene gevoelszenuw [WNT reflectie], en reflex ‘id.’ inom zulke handelingen te onderscheiden heeft men de benaming “reflex” uitgevonden [1860; WNT], ‘weerspiegeling’ in de doorschijnende schaduwen en reflexen [1880; WNT lichten I].
Ontleend, aanvankelijk in gelatiniseerde vorm, aan Frans réflexe ‘onwillekeurige reactie op een zenuwprikkel’ [1855; Rey], verkorting van het bn. in action réflexe ‘id.’ [1841; Rey], waarin het bn. réflexe een geleerde ontlening is aan Latijnreflexus ‘omgedraaid, teruggebogen’, verl.deelw. van reflectere ‘ombuigen, achterwaarts buigen’, gevormd met → re-‘terug-’ bij flectere ‘buigen, vouwen’, zie → flecteren. Bij een reflex worden de zenuwsignalen teruggebogen nog voor ze de hersenen bereiken.
Eerdere, niet-fysiologische en inmiddels verouderde betekenissen van het Franse bn. réflexe zijn ‘plaatsvindend door weerkaatsing’ [1372; Rey], ‘met betrekking tot weerkaatsing’ [1697; Rey]. Deze gaan terug op een middeleeuws-Latijnse betekenis van reflexus ‘weerkaatsing, terugbuiging’ [ca. 1325; Rey]. Daarnaast bestond een afleiding Laatlatijn reflexio‘weerkaatsing, terugbuiging’, dat in het Frans als réflexion en in het Nederlands als reflectie (voorheen ook wel reflexie) is overgenomen: vnnl. reflectie ‘weerkaatsing van licht’ [1553; iWNT], reflectie ‘overweging’ [1596; iWNT], reflexy‘weerglans (in de schilderkunst)’ [1604; iWNT]. Beide woorden werden aanvankelijk zonder onderscheid gebruikt, zoals inreflexen of wederglansen ‘weerglans (in de schilderkunst)’ [begin 17e eeuw; iWNT weerglans] en de reflectie van eene gevoelszenuw [1844; iWNT].
It starts here, but of course it doesn't start here...;
an idea;
An industrial space.
A performer is holding a mirror.
The spectator waits for the mirror to become to heavy to hold.
The performer has to drop the mirror when he/she's exhausted.
Different mirrors, different weights, different times.
I expect that;
The mirror will reflect the space where the performer is gazing at.
The mirror will make the spectator look at themselves.
the mirror will create a wall between the identity of the performer and the spectators.
While the performer will become tired, the mirror will start to move in the hands of the performer. The little moves will be enlarged because of the mirror.
The reflection of the space will create an even bigger movement.
Tools;
Different mirrors, composed upon the scales and human proportions (like the length of the arms)
An industrial or theatrical space where all concentration will be focused on the time of the performer
Sound?
outfit?
Research;
Reflex
Mirror history and meaning
Human proportions
Perception of time
Perception of movement
Space awareness/ perception
Mirror neurons are believed to mediate the understanding of other animals' behaviour. For example, a mirror neuron which fires when the monkey rips a piece of paper would also fire when the monkey sees a person rip paper, or hears paper ripping (without visual cues). These properties have led researchers to believe that mirror neurons encode abstract concepts of actions like 'ripping paper', whether the action is performed by the monkey or another animal.[1]
The function of mirror neurons in macaques remains unknown. Adult macaques do not seem to learn by imitation. Recent experiments by Ferrari and colleagues suggest that infant macaqes can imitate a human's face movements, though only as neonates and during a limited temporal window.[24] Even if it has not yet been empirically demonstrated, it has been proposed that mirror neurons underlie this behaviour and other imitative phenomena.[25] Indeed, there is limited understanding of the degree to which monkeys show imitative behaviour.[10]
In adult monkeys, mirror neurons may enable the monkey to understand what another monkey is doing, or to recognise the other monkey's action.[26]
Near-death events have triggered out-of-body experiences
Experts have found a way to trigger an out-of-body experience in volunteers.
The experiments, described in the Science journal, offer a scientific
explanation for a phenomenon experienced by one in 10 people.
Two teams used virtual reality goggles to con the brain into thinking the body was located elsewhere.
The visual illusion plus the feel of their real bodies being touched
made volunteers sense that they had moved outside of their physical
bodies.
The researchers say their findings could have practical applications,
such as helping take video games to the next level of virtuality so the
players feel as if they are actually inside the game.
Clinically, surgeons might also be able to perform operations on
patients thousands of miles away by controlling a robotic virtual self.
Teleported
For some, out-of-body experiences or OBEs occurs spontaneously, while
for others it is linked to dangerous circumstances, a near-death
experience, a dream-like state or use of alcohol or drugs.
We feel that our self is located where the eyes are
UCL researcher Dr Henrik Ehrsson
One theory is that it is down to how people perceive their own body -
those unhappy or less in touch with their body are more likely to have
an OBE.
But the two teams, from University College London, UK, and the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, believe there is a
neurological explanation.
Their work suggests a disconnection between the brain circuits that
process visual and touch sensory information may thus be responsible for
some OBEs.
In the Swiss experiments, the researchers asked volunteers to stand in front of a camera while wearing video-display goggles.
Through these goggles, the volunteers could see a camera view of their
own back - a three-dimensional "virtual own body" that appeared to be
standing in front of them.
When the researchers stroked the back of the volunteer with a pen, the
volunteer could see their virtual back being stroked either
simultaneously or with a time lag.
The volunteers reported that the sensation seemed to be caused by the
pen on their virtual back, rather than their real back, making them feel
as if the virtual body was their own rather than a hologram.
Volunteers
Even when the camera was switched to film the back of a mannequin being
stroked rather than their own back, the volunteers still reported
feeling as if the virtual mannequin body was their own.
And when the researchers switched off the goggles, guided the volunteers
back a few paces, and then asked them to walk back to where they had
been standing, the volunteers overshot the target, returning nearer to
the position of their "virtual self".
Dr Henrik Ehrsson, who led the UCL research, used a similar set-up in
his tests and found volunteers had a physiological response - increased
skin sweating - when they felt their virtual self was being threatened -
appearing to be hit with a hammer.
Dr Ehrsson said: "This experiment suggests that the first-person visual
perspective is critically important for the in-body experience. In other
words, we feel that our self is located where the eyes are."
Dr Susan Blackmore, psychologist and visiting lecturer at the University
of the West of England, said: "This has at last brought OBEs into the
lab and tested one of the main theories of how they occur.
"Scientists have long suspected that the clue to these extraordinary,
and sometimes life-changing, experiences lies in disrupting our normal
illusion of being a self behind our eyes, and replacing it with a new
viewpoint from above or behind."
Using virtual-reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists
have induced out-of-body experiences — the sensation of drifting outside
of one’s own body — in ordinary, healthy people, according to studies
being published today in the journal Science.
Professor Olaf Blanke, center, with his assistant and electronics engineer Tej Tadi and a mannequin nicknamed Estelle.
When people gazed at an illusory image of themselves through the
goggles and were prodded in just the right way with the stick, they felt
as if they had left their bodies.
The research reveals that “the
sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self,” is actually
constructed from multiple sensory streams, said one expert on body and
mind, Dr. Matthew M. Botvinick, an assistant professor of neuroscience
at Princeton University.
Usually
these sensory streams, which include vision, touch, balance and the
sense of where one’s body is positioned in space, work together
seamlessly, Dr. Botvinick said. But when the information coming from the
sensory sources does not match up, the sense of being embodied as a
whole comes apart.
The brain, which abhors ambiguity, then forces a
decision that can, as the new experiments show, involve the sense of
being in a different body.
The research provides a physical
explanation for phenomena usually ascribed to otherworldly influences,
said Peter Brugger, a neurologist at University Hospital in Zurich, who,
like Dr. Botvinick, had no role in the experiments. In what is
popularly referred to as near-death experience, people who have been in
the throes of severe and sudden injury or illness often report the
sensation of floating over their body, looking down, hearing what is
said and then, just as suddenly, finding themselves back inside their
body.
Out-of-body experiences have also been reported to occur
during sleep paralysis, the exertion of extreme sports and intense
meditation practices.
The new research is a first step in figuring out exactly how the brain creates this sensation, Dr. Brugger said.
The
out-of-body experiments were conducted by two research groups using
slightly different methods intended to expand the so-called rubber hand
illusion.
In that illusion, people hide one hand in their lap and
look at a rubber hand set on a table in front of them. As a researcher
strokes the real hand and the rubber hand simultaneously with a stick,
people have the vivid sense that the rubber hand is their own. When the
rubber hand is whacked with a hammer, they wince and sometimes cry out.
The
illusion shows that body parts can be “separated” from the whole body
by manipulating a mismatch between touch and vision. That is, when a
person’s brain sees the fake hand being stroked and feels the same
sensation, the sense of being touched is misattributed to the fake.
The new experiments were designed to create a whole-body illusion with similar manipulations.
In
Switzerland, Dr. Olaf Blanke, a neuroscientist at the École
Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, asked people to don virtual-reality
goggles while standing in an empty room. A camera projected an image of
each person taken from the back and displayed that image as if it were
six feet in front of the subject, who thus saw an illusory image of
himself.
Then Dr. Blanke stroked each person’s back for one
minute with a stick while simultaneously projecting the image of the
stick onto the illusory body.
When the strokes were synchronous,
people reported the sensation of being momentarily within the illusory
body. When the strokes were not synchronous, the illusion did not occur.
In
another variation, Dr. Blanke projected a “rubber body” — a cheap
mannequin bought on eBay and dressed in the same clothes as the subject —
into the virtual-reality goggles. With synchronous strokes of the
stick, people’s sense of self drifted into the mannequin.
A
separate set of experiments was carried out by Henrik Ehrsson, an
assistant professor of neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in
Stockholm.
Last year, when Dr. Ehrsson was “a bored medical
student at University College London,” he wondered, he said, “what would
happen if you ‘took’ your eyes and moved them to a different part of a
room.”
“Would you see yourself where your eyes were placed?” he said. “Or from where your body was placed?”
To
find out, he asked people to sit in a chair and wear goggles connected
to two video cameras placed six feet behind them. The left camera
projected to the left eye, the right camera to the right eye. As a
result, people saw their own backs from the perspective of a virtual
person sitting behind them.
Using two sticks, Dr. Ehrsson stroked
each person’s chest for two minutes with one stick while moving the
second stick just under the camera lenses, as if it were touching the
virtual body.
Again, when the stroking was synchronous, people
reported the sense of being outside their own bodies, in this case
looking at themselves from a distance where their “eyes” were situated.
Then
Dr. Ehrsson grabbed a hammer. While people were experiencing the
illusion, he pretended to smash the virtual body by waving the hammer
just below the cameras. Immediately, the subjects registered a threat
response as measured by sensors on their skin. They sweated, and their
pulses raced. They also reacted emotionally, as if they were watching
themselves get hurt.
Participants in the experiments conducted by
Dr. Blanke and Dr. Ehrsson reported having felt a sense of drifting out
of their bodies, but not a strong sense of floating or rotating as is
common in full-blown out-of-body experiences, the researchers said.
The next set of experiments, they said, will involve decoupling not
just touch and vision but other aspects of sensory embodiment, including
the sense of balance and the body’s position in space.
*************************
The Science of Out-of-Body Experiences
By
Laura Blue Thursday, Aug. 23, 2007
Henrik Ehrsson / AP
An experiment in out-of-body experiences at the University College, London.
Get ready to see yourself in a new light. Two papers released this week by the journal Science
describe what seem to be the first lab-induced out-of-body experiences
in healthy people. Using goggles hooked up to video cameras, and sticks
to poke and stroke, researchers subjected study participants to a
variety of visual and physical cues to confuse their brain about their
body's location. Sound a bit impractical? Consider, then, how the
studies relate to humankind's most enduring question: what makes us
ourselves in the first place? "I'm not really interested in out-of-body
experiences," says Henrik Ehrsson, one of the study's authors and an
assistant professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. "I'm really
interested in in-body experiences: how the brain keeps and updates a
model of the world and the body. To have a perception of your own body
is the foundation of self-consciousness."
That is, of course, why out-of-body experiences have always been,
well, out-of-body. People report such experiences after returning from
the "brink of death," or being under the influence of mind-altering
drugs — no doubt why the sensation has long been equated with spiritual
awakening (and with crackpots). But, today, with new advances in
neurology, scientists are better able than ever to locate the physical
roots of these bizarre perceptions of self. For example, neurologists
have studied amputees who can feel sensation where their missing limbs
used to be; researchers think this phantom limb phenomenon has to do
with rewiring in the brain's somatosensory cortex. And, in the lab,
researchers have been able to make people feel that fake rubber hands
are attached to their own bodies. (This was done simply enough, by
touching the participants' real hands while having them watch the rubber
hands be touched in the same way and the same time.) Now, there are the
current Science experiments: the first where volunteers have
relocated their entire "selves" — their minds, as it were — outside of
their bodies.
In both studies, participants wore goggles hooked up to cameras
planted behind them, so that participants had a view of their own backs.
Then they were physically stimulated in ways that would enhance or
reduce the feeling that their selves were located outside their bodies.
For his paper, Ehrsson used a stick to poke the chest of each
participant (out of view of the person being poked) while also poking
the area below the camera where a chest would have been (which the
person could see through the goggles). Sure enough, the participants
reported that it felt like their vantage point was exactly the same as
that of the camera. "You feel quite clearly that you are sitting in the
corner of the room, and you see yourself sitting elsewhere. But it's not
you," Ehrsson says. To be certain — and to get some harder data — he
hooked up his participants to stress-monitoring devices, and then swung a
hammer at the space where the illusory chest would have been. The
readings showed signs of stress all right. Many participants also
visibly flinched.
The second experiment was conducted at Ecole Polytechnique F�d�rale
de Lausanne in Switzerland, by a team including neurologist Olaf Blanke,
whose work with out-of-body experiences suggests that their neural
underpinnings reside in the brain's temporo-parietal junction. Blanke
and his colleagues had participants watch their own backs being stroked —
either through a video feed coming live to their eyes or through one
coming slightly out of synch. Afterward, the participants were
blindfolded and asked to return to their original place in the room; on
average, those who had had the in-synch physical stimuli — and, thus,
the real feeling of an out-of-body experience — "drifted" toward where
the illusion had been.
So, do these lab experiments really feel like a true out-of-body
experience? "It's very vivid," says Ehrsson of his test. Participants
say they really did feel like they were outside of their bodies. People
in both sets of studies found the experience "weird." Some of Ehrsson's
subjects described the experiment as "cool" and giggled, while some in
Blanke's study called it "irritating." But the extent to which the
experiments succeeded "depends what you mean by the full-blown
out-of-body experience," says Ehrsson. "Of course you know that it's not
real, that it's all due to the goggles. But you can't just think it
away."
I come from the world of location
music theatre. That’s where I got the chance to look at expressive bodies in
theatrical spaces. I could look at the body as a complicated system of emotions
and transformations. The becoming of a persona is a magical transformation. With enough practice the actors
could transform into ‘the other thing’ in an instant.
For me this expressive
transformation was also possible with the use of costume during my tailoring
study. I fantasized a lot about the impossible outfit. To be
able to wear the space that is surrounding the body. Not to protect the body
but to enlarge the expressive qualities.
During my study Artscience, which is
about making work for the senses of the spectator, I made some performances.
The
performances were based on the sensations of the body while moving through time
and space. I translate Sensory experiences into performed, theatrical and dramatic time-based works.
I display them slower or bigger than reality. The dramatic qualities inside a fast or short moment are very hard to grasp. While I
display them slower than reality the brain can connect to the situation and re-construct the movement. What happens in
the perception of the spectator, I cannot direct. The part, which is the most
abstract and the most difficult to grasp, will make the best connection with
the spectator. Because my work is with or performed by the body, the spectator
easily relates to the displayed scene and therefore can use their own body to
try to perceive and experience the same movement, or at least try to connect
the elements.
Time becomes a narrative and therefore
starts being theatrical. When I
stretch one second of time into seven minutes, all elements within that second
become visible, you have a better view on the dramatic story that lies within
that short moment. You can witness the dramatic story develop over time and
interpret this as a story or narrative.
In my research I like to connect to scientific experiments concerning the sensory organs and mirror neurons. My work is addressing to the human brain which is capable of making brilliant connections and therefore my work could be considered to only exists in the mind of the spectator.
The
works are created with the use of the expressive abilities of the body and of material and
objects.
In that sense I consider an expressive object as a performer too.
Stap; An installation based on the
perspective of the foot. I made a shoe with cameras to be able to capture
vision and sound from the other side of the body. The foot is a moving limb and
therefore it is impossible to put your eyes in that position. By capturing the
‘sensations’ of the foot you get the change to perceive a different perspective
on such a normal daily thing like walking.
Yellow; a spoken word is divided
into five faces. I filmed a face while saying the word yellow and slowed it
down to discover the dramatic and expressive transitions between the perceivable
parts of the sound. In the word, while listening to it, you are able to
distinguish the y-e-ll-o-w. I’m interested in the parts were the ‘-‘ is
positioned. These transitions of the face and the sound are were the brain is
working to make and to keep the connections, to re-construct what has to become
one understandable word. Our brain is able to do this when the individual
elements are close to each other. In film this has to be at least 16 frames a
second to make an almost fluent movement visible. Our brain works best at 20
‘frames’ per second.
I like to slow down time in such
a way that the moments stand further apart from each other. The brain starts to connect the faces that I display and creates his or her own word again.
1 seconde #1; I filmed myself making a
simple gesture like a turn-around and divided that into the 20 frames or slides
that the brain perceives. These slides were turned into silhouettes with an open
structure so that the inside mass of the moment is also visible. When you stand
still you can look at the actual development over time. While you walk around,
the slides start to interfere and create the moiré effect. You are looking at
curved steel but the interfering lines create new movements within the
sculpture and therefore display something like a film again. The brain makes
you believe you see new moving shapes and interprets these as individual
elements within the sculpture.
We feel that our self is located where the eyes are
Henrik Ehrsson / AP
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