Any precedent for biofeedback?, Would it really happen? Options

[Nerdynick]

Is there any real-life evidence to support biofeedback/psychosomatic feedback like what hackers face when attacked in VR, or like in The Matrix when they were injured, or any of the other numerous settings that use it?

Cheers!

[Kagetenshi]

No; the concept of the cyberdeck is predicated on an emerging technology that requires very intimate connection to the human brain. Right now, with the majority of all human/computer interface modulated through meaty blobs on sticks, we simply lack that connection.

I suppose you could consider the existence of seizures a kind of evidence, though.

~J

[SpellBinder]

Theoretically anything that sends/receives electrical impulses directly to the brain (or any nerve cells) has the potential for biofeedback if the voltage (or amps, or whatever) spike beyond tolerance limits.

[Kagetenshi]

That's not so much "biofeedback" as electrocution, but if it's possible to receive a signal through the eyes and trigger a seizure it's presumably possible to receive a signal through any sufficiently invasive input channel with similar results.

~J

[Nerdynick]

Would that cause the oft described nose/ear/tearduct- bleeds associated with biofeedback? Or would it just cause brain death?

[Karoline]

Would that cause the oft described nose/ear/tearduct- bleeds associated with biofeedback? Or would it just cause brain death?

That is the one thing that would be guaranteed not to happen. There has never been evidence of 'mind over matter' causing unprompted spontaneous bleeding or destruction of cells. Dreams would be a wonderful example of this. No mater what kind of damage you take in a dream, and no matter how realistic the dream is, or how strongly you believe in the reality of the dream, no one has ever spontaneously started bleeding or having internal organ damage or anything similar. And (despite what the new Freddy movie might say), no one has ever died while sleeping simply because they dreamed that they died. So, there is also no evidence for death in the way The Matrix presents it. The brain can't be 'convinced' that it is dead.

Now, it is certainly reasonable to believe that an IC (or whatever) could make something connected to your brain give an electric surge to damage a person's brain, but it is even more reasonable to believe that it could be prevented, because surge protector technology has been around for ages.

[Kagetenshi]

It's not clear to me what mechanic might cause an earbleed or tearduct-bleed, but nose blood vessels are sensitive enough that a sudden change in blood pressure could cause bleeding—heart failure can apparently do it, and I'm finding some suggestions that seizures may cause or be accompanied by nosebleeds on occasion.

no one has ever died while sleeping simply because they dreamed that they died.

Unsubstantiated statement! We have no evidence for this and thus no reason to believe it to be true, but we're still short on dream machines and for obvious reasons such things can't be self-reported.

~J

[SpellBinder]

I wouldn't put it as an absolute, but a possibility. If the feedback can cause the heart to beat at an irregular rate, or more fiercely than is necessary to push blood, capillaries and other small blood vessels can rupture.

[Karoline]

Mmm, so maybe you could get a nosebleed (if you could somehow convince the brain to attempt to exceed the body's limits, which is difficult, and would have to be intentional, not simply a side effect of normal virtual stimulus, even getting shot), but you won't have people spitting up blood and such because they were shot in the virtual world.

[Mongoose]

Is there any real-life evidence to support biofeedback/psychosomatic feedback like what hackers face when attacked in VR, or like in The Matrix when they were injured, or any of the other numerous settings that use it?

There's evidence of people who meditate being able to do some surprising things to their bodies purely through mental command. Obviously these aren't really harmful things, since you can't train for that, but it seems entirely possible the mind can do harmful things to the body. There's even a good body of medical evidence that when under prolonged stress, the mind DOES do harmful things to the body, but that's a fairly long process.

Given the nature of Black IC type biofeedback, what you'd probably get is people having seizures that strain muscles, glands going wild (posibly causing tachicardia or diabetic shock), the diaphram shutting down or spasming so they can't breathe, and so on. A good medtech would be able to prevent a lot of that- but then, that would be your tam giving you first aid, right?

[SpellBinder]

Mmm, so maybe you could get a nosebleed (if you could somehow convince the brain to attempt to exceed the body's limits, which is difficult, and would have to be intentional, not simply a side effect of normal virtual stimulus, even getting shot), but you won't have people spitting up blood and such because they were shot in the virtual world.

Still possible, I'd say, but not all that much compared to the others. The alveoli aren't all that thick to facilitate the exchange of gasses to and from the blood, and they are about 70% covered with capillaries. Depends really on how many alveoli rupture due to a spike in blood pressure, assuming that the spike is severe enough. Still, as the lungs are relatively buried in the body compared to the ears and nose, you'd still be more likely to see bleeding from the head than the misting spray of blood from the mouth.

[Jizmack]

What your brain perceives can cause physiological effects to the physical body.

Examples-1: Sitting still inside a planetarium your brain perceives that you are flying about and some people actually become nauseated and get vertigo. In rare cases some actually vomit. Even though, the person is 100% aware the he is not moving, the visual perception generated “biofeedback” and the body physically reacted.

Example-2: Safely watching a horror movie, many people get startled with increasing heart rates, sweating, and physically jumping out of their seats. Even though, the person is 100% aware the she is just watching a movie, the perception of the more primal part of the brain generates “biofeedback” and the body physically reacts.

Example-3: During brain surgery almost all patients are intentionally kept conscious. This is because if the doctor(s) inadvertently “bump into” the wrong part of the brain cells they can instantly be notified of their “oops” by observing any erratic behaviors (physical or verbal) of the patient. Granted this is direct intrusion into the brain, but the actual cause of the erratic behavior is interrupted or garbled neuron signals of the brain cells. Often times, the patient may have no idea that this is happening and can physically hurt himself, as the brain may be telling the motor nerves to violently trigger.

Example-4: The hypothalamus part of the brain generally governs emotional behavior via hormones. If directly manipulated by stimuli it can induce tremendous physiological stress on the physical body, including sudden increases in blood pressure that may cause some hemorrhaging; albeit in rare cases, but it is possible.

[hobgoblin]

i wonder if the coughing blood thing was a combo of blood in mouth (as seen from some earlier scene when neo is trained in overriding his own mental limitations, and goes face first into the ground) and a reflexive reaction to being "hit" in the abdomen.

so its not blood from the lungs, but bleeding from the gums that have pooled and then gets ejected with the air.

Tho mostly it was the directors attempt at connecting matrix and real body to make it a more tense fight scene.

And honestly, i don't think there is much research right now in sending virtual data into the nervous system. Especially not via the brain/spine connection like the jack location in matrix would do. Most seems to hover around visual, auditory and touch using the outermost nerves available.

[TeslaNick]

The alternatives would be difficult to roleplay effectively.

Let's imagine that cold sim is like lucid dreaming, and it uses that mechanism to interact with the matrix. Your dreamt actions are interpreted, and suggestive stimuli are returned to you via your link. When you awake from a particularly frightening dream, you could reasonably be described as stunned -- you certainly aren't on the top of your game.

Hot sim might be more like conscious reality, where input isn't fed through the "dream filter", and is instead directly mocking your body's nervous inputs, but without the millions of years of evolutionary safeguards that keep unfiltered input from getting to sensitive areas of your brain.

Biofeedback might thus feel like a migraine or a seizure. It might have short-term symptoms similar to a stroke or might involve painful muscle spasms. It could feel like fibromyalgia, which has a neurological component. It might induce catatonia, which has other side effects. It might overclock a user's adrenal gland, dumping huge amounts of regulatory hormones into the blood, inducing tachycardia. It could throw the body into shock, which can cause the autonomic nervous system to either crash or go into overdrive.

[Rayzorblades]

I've also seen demonstrations of the real world "chi" martial artists using their "chi" to give their targets heart attacks. Heart attacks were monitored by EMTs, and the martial artists used "chi" to stop the heart attacks and restore the targets afterward.

The problem was this "chi" didn't work on anyone who wasn't heavily indoctrinated into the martial art, suggesting a type of hypnosis or suggestion. Basically the targets were instantly willing themselves into heart attacks. Biofeedbacking themselves to potential death.

Some of us psych students experimented with similar things in the human performance lab at my uni. The hypnosis trick of telling someone you were touching them with a lit cigarette and actually touching them with ice but watching a blister form on the spot among other things.

Some of what we did really pushed the limits of believability even from a sciency type like myself. The brain is capable of making the body do some amazing and very strange things.

[hobgoblin]

well, ol tzu had something to say about misdirection. And there are cases of the immune system going berserk in a otherwise healthy body.

[Karoline]

What your brain perceives can cause physiological effects to the physical body.

Examples-1: Sitting still inside a planetarium your brain perceives that you are flying about and some people actually become nauseated and get vertigo. In rare cases some actually vomit. Even though, the person is 100% aware the he is not moving, the visual perception generated “biofeedback” and the body physically reacted.

Example-2: Safely watching a horror movie, many people get startled with increasing heart rates, sweating, and physically jumping out of their seats. Even though, the person is 100% aware the she is just watching a movie, the perception of the more primal part of the brain generates “biofeedback” and the body physically reacts.

Example-3: During brain surgery almost all patients are intentionally kept conscious. This is because if the doctor(s) inadvertently “bump into” the wrong part of the brain cells they can instantly be notified of their “oops” by observing any erratic behaviors (physical or verbal) of the patient. Granted this is direct intrusion into the brain, but the actual cause of the erratic behavior is interrupted or garbled neuron signals of the brain cells. Often times, the patient may have no idea that this is happening and can physically hurt himself, as the brain may be telling the motor nerves to violently trigger.

All of these are bad examples, because all of them are examples of something that the brain is in charge of anyway, all things that the brain can do. You can will yourself to increase your heart rate, you can (in theory) will yourself to throw up, and you can certainly will yourself to make erratic movements. You cannot however will yourself to spontaneously bleed.

Example-4: The hypothalamus part of the brain generally governs emotional behavior via hormones. If directly manipulated by stimuli it can induce tremendous physiological stress on the physical body, including sudden increases in blood pressure that may cause some hemorrhaging; albeit in rare cases, but it is possible.

This is still a fairly fringe thing, and isn't going to be damaging to the level we've come to expect from The Matrix and SR. Sure, you could maybe get a nose bleed or something, but I'm not even sure (and rather doubt) that this would happen with every person. Our bodies are quite resilient.

When you awake from a particularly frightening dream, you could reasonably be described as stunned -- you certainly aren't on the top of your game.

I don't know, I actually wake up from a nightmare much more alert than just waking up from normal sleep. Heck, I'm likely more aware than just normal day-to-day because my fight/flight response has been triggered.

Some of us psych students experimented with similar things in the human performance lab at my uni. The hypnosis trick of telling someone you were touching them with a lit cigarette and actually touching them with ice but watching a blister form on the spot among other things.

That seems highly suspect since the brain has nothing to do at all with the forming of blisters. It is an entirely reactive process on the part of the body itself. Are you sure it wasn't just a normal reaction to the ice itself? I mean, you did use controls right? With the same exposure to the same temperature ice? And you looked at the affected area from multiple people mixed from both control and non groups without knowing which was which, right?

[Kagetenshi]

Hey, what do you know—turns out psychogenic death is an accepted phenomenon and subject of research.

~J

[Rayzorblades]

You cannot however will yourself to spontaneously bleed.

Attempted justification of stigmata comes to mind. Along with the on hand psychologist's comment about the so called "heartland ghost" injuries during one of the studies of that case I saw years ago, I think on a show called Sightings or something. For anybody unaware it was a supposed hunted house who's resident ghost often scratched the husband who lived there on camera. Injuries which spontaneously formed from nowhere, assuming no camera tricks, and the shrink thought they were hysterical.

That seems highly suspect since the brain has nothing to do at all with the forming of blisters. It is an entirely reactive process on the part of the body itself. Are you sure it wasn't just a normal reaction to the ice itself? I mean, you did use controls right? With the same exposure to the same temperature ice? And you looked at the affected area from multiple people mixed from both control and non groups without knowing which was which, right?

I do know what a blister looks like, as well as the fact that a cube of frozen water from a regular freezer (cafeteria) touched to the skin for a few seconds is unlikely to cause blistering. And yet it did. The same people while not under hypnosis didn't blister in ice from the same tray. Such was the limit of our controls, so as to lessen the idea of possible reaction from another compound (like a potential allergen, since it was a cafeteria freezer).

One of the first things you learn from first year psych is that basically everything that's not in your conscious awareness is the domain of the subconscious, from hair and fingernail growth to peristalsis. The textbook is Psychology Frontiers and Applications 3rd Canadian Edition by Passer et al and published by Mcgraw-Hill in 2008, just FYI.

Blisters are usually filled with serum, which comes from the vascular system or the lymph system, which in turn are governed over by hormones that come from the brain.

Suffice it to say I can see where you're coming from when you confuse an anecdote about psych students messing around in the lab (which I thought I made pretty clear) with a double blind case study. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Kagetenshi]

That seems highly suspect since the brain has nothing to do at all with the forming of blisters. It is an entirely reactive process on the part of the body itself. Are you sure it wasn't just a normal reaction to the ice itself? I mean, you did use controls right? With the same exposure to the same temperature ice? And you looked at the affected area from multiple people mixed from both control and non groups without knowing which was which, right?

An old article, but here. The journal is peer-reviewed, but I don't know its quality (I'm in computer science, all this "physical object" nonsense is out of my domain).

~J

[Karoline]

An old article, but here. The journal is peer-reviewed, but I don't know its quality (I'm in computer science, all this "physical object" nonsense is out of my domain).

~J

Well, it is hard to tell, Chemistry is my area of knowledge, but it seems like it is a halfway decent journal, and the article looked reasonable. May have to give it a more in-depth look later. I did find it very interesting though that the cases that couldn't be explained away by any of their reasons, were also cases in which the 'blister' didn't occur at the same spot as the stimulus, and in one case a stimulus wasn't even used, causing the spontaneous generation of 'blisters'. Unfortunately I'll have to go look through those other articles to figure out what kind of percentages of participants we're talking about, or how many people were used and various other quality control standards.

If rayzor is right about the hormones and such, my best guess would be that the perceived threat of being burned caused the brain to release the hormone which generated the fluid which had to go somewhere, and so simply pooled in an area that had a small defect or something similar.

But ghost stories, ehhh, don't like going there. After all, it could be that there was really a ghost there, right? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Rayzorblades]

Well, it is hard to tell, Chemistry is my area of knowledge, but it seems like it is a halfway decent journal, and the article looked reasonable. May have to give it a more in-depth look later. I did find it very interesting though that the cases that couldn't be explained away by any of their reasons, were also cases in which the 'blister' didn't occur at the same spot as the stimulus, and in one case a stimulus wasn't even used, causing the spontaneous generation of 'blisters'. Unfortunately I'll have to go look through those other articles to figure out what kind of percentages of participants we're talking about, or how many people were used and various other quality control standards.

If rayzor is right about the hormones and such, my best guess would be that the perceived threat of being burned caused the brain to release the hormone which generated the fluid which had to go somewhere, and so simply pooled in an area that had a small defect or something similar.

But ghost stories, ehhh, don't like going there. After all, it could be that there was really a ghost there, right? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Right now I'm double majoring in bio and psych as mind over body is one of my major fields of interest. Anyway, as to the journal itself I've had conflicting opinions from psych profs on it. Most say it's a good journal, but a few say bollocks and to take it on a paper by paper basis and use lots of critical thinking.

Your hypothesis about the perceived threat is exactly what I thought was the mechanism as well. Ours didn't look completely like normal burn blistering, but a friend thought it was because actual burns would make the blister look different due to damage in the surrounding tissue, which obviously there was none of in these cases.

Haha true about the ghost stories, you just never know.

[Jizmack]

All of these are bad examples, because all of them are examples of something that the brain is in charge of anyway, all things that the brain can do. You can will yourself to increase your heart rate, you can (in theory) will yourself to throw up, and you can certainly will yourself to make erratic movements. You cannot however will yourself to spontaneously bleed.

The brain is in charge of both voluntary and involuntary actions/reactions of the body. That’s the whole point. Those are examples of affecting a part of your brain that “is in charge of” an involuntary action (becoming dizzy and vomiting) that overrides voluntary actions (enjoying the show).

[TeslaNick]

One of the first things you learn from first year psych is that basically everything that's not in your conscious awareness is the domain of the subconscious, from hair and fingernail growth to peristalsis. The textbook is Psychology Frontiers and Applications 3rd Canadian Edition by Passer et al and published by Mcgraw-Hill in 2008, just FYI.

Fingernail and hair growth aren't directly controlled by consciousness -- they continue to happen for hours after clinical death. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Blisters are usually filled with serum, which comes from the vascular system or the lymph system, which in turn are governed over by hormones that come from the brain.

I suspect that this has a lot to do with the body's inflammatory response, which appears to have a neurological component. What you might be seeing is a reverse placebo effect, where the body is reacting to damage it believes is taking place by attempting to repair any damage in the region it thinks is affected. This appears to be the action stimulated by acupuncture as well -- it doesn't really matter where you get stabbed with needles, as long as you think it might work, your body will feel somewhat less pain and your inflammation response will be lessened.

To give you a sense of the power of the placebo effect -- it's extremely effective in trials when used to cure warts. Apply a random smelly substance to a wart and assure the patient that it's a wart-removing chemical, and the wart will go away even if the substance does nothing. I recommend listening to the Placebo episode of Radiolab.

[Rayzorblades]

Fingernail and hair growth aren't directly controlled by consciousness -- they continue to happen for hours after clinical death. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Evidence please.

I suspect that this has a lot to do with the body's inflammatory response, which appears to have a neurological component. What you might be seeing is a reverse placebo effect, where the body is reacting to damage it believes is taking place by attempting to repair any damage in the region it thinks is affected. This appears to be the action stimulated by acupuncture as well -- it doesn't really matter where you get stabbed with needles, as long as you think it might work, your body will feel somewhat less pain and your inflammation response will be lessened.

Rabbits don't suffer from the placebo effect.

To give you a sense of the power of the placebo effect -- it's extremely effective in trials when used to cure warts. Apply a random smelly substance to a wart and assure the patient that it's a wart-removing chemical, and the wart will go away even if the substance does nothing. I recommend listening to the Placebo episode of Radiolab.

LOL yes I'm quite aware. Studying the placebo effect is basically what I do for a living.