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Virtual reality kit swap bodies with partner

Couples can see through each others’ eyes using a virtual reality kit, the Daily Mail reported.

Barcelona-based BeAnotherLab set up a “gender swap experiment” using an Oculus head-mounted display with built-in cameras that shows what is being recorded by the visor worn by the other partner.

“Our main interest through this approach is to use the ‘Machine’ as a tool to help promote empathy among individuals of different social, cultural and ideological contexts,” the Mail quoted the researchers of BeAnotherLab as saying.

Partners synchronize movements of the other, tricking the brain into thinking their body is not their own but the partner’s. The user can also move and interact with objects in a room and the partner’s thoughts are spoken through headphones to create the overall effect.

The experiment using the Machine To Be Another system was designed as an “embodiment experience,” a neuroscience technique making users feel they are in a different body.

By Yoon Ha-youn and news reports (yhayoun@heraldcorp.com)