How to feel 'PHANTOM TOUCH' in VR with your MIND

people can become so immersed in virtual reality they start to feel things that aren't even there sight alone is enough to invoke a feeling of touch on a player's body whether that's the warm sensation of a hug or the pain of being shot there's no haptics involved the only hardware we rely on is the strongest piece of technology in the world the human brain [Music] hey guys and welcome back to the virtual reality show where we talk about any and all things related to virtual reality inside virtual reality i'm your host fia in 2020 i made a video about the weird phenomenon of phantom touch that people experience in virtual reality now it's 2022 and i've seen firsthand how popular of a topic phantom touch truly is after making that video after all it's kind of freaky and scary but also comforting and even sensual people who go into vr for the first time and experience it get so taken aback that they have to know the explanation behind it and then there's others who hear about it and then train their brains to strengthen those feelings this week i reopened the survey from my previous video and got a sample size of over 500 people who experience phantom touch asking questions about how they experience it in this video i'll go over those results and also dive into the scientific reasonings for how this phenomenon occurs with an expert psychologist and finally we'll visit a phantom touch trainer who does one-on-one sessions to induce the sensations of being touched in vr chat to users like you or me but first let's go over the basics phantom touch is a subcategory of phantom sense which includes any sensory experience that is induced through virtual reality like smells but the touchy feelies are by far the most common and talked about it's commonly experienced in player to player interactions whether that be from head paths handshakes or let's just say heavy petting i made a whole video on that side of vr so you can definitely check that out after this one however it's not just limited to player to player there can be many stimulants like the chill of snow or warmth of a fire you might actually feel running into a wall but you can also feel the pain of being stabbed or shot basically anything you can imagine can be a visual stimulant for some people phantom touch is a really amazing thing it can be so comforting to cuddle up to someone in front of a mirror while having your head or face touched but it could also be a curse consent is something that can often get really skirted around in vr seeing as people see it is not real touching poking walking through or even physically harassing someone might seem funny but a lot of people end up hiding their phantom touch from others because of how not funny it is to them when they feel a physical sensation on their body you probably wouldn't just go up to someone you don't know in real life and violate their face and body so the same rules apply in virtual reality too i experience phantom touch very strongly it's weird but i i can actually feel when people touch my ears like what you see before you you can feel so obviously phantom touch is pretty cool but there's sadly not many resources or documentation on it at all which is why i decided to go gather my own data i posted a survey to my discord server android if you want to be included in future videos and twitter i pulled in a sample size of over 500 people with phantom touch well over double the original sample in my previous video the results are pretty freaking interesting and i'm going to quickly summarize the most interesting takeaways next the first batch of data showed that almost half of the respondents experience it the majority of the time they're in vr the other 50 has it less often the most common sensations people feel are tingling fuzziness and heat from things like fires or explosions less people reported pain and numbness but it is interesting to see how about a third have actually experienced sexual pleasure again check my old video for more on this there were tons of less common feelings reported such as tickling textures or pressure ninety percent of people get phantom touch from player to player interaction beating out any other stimulus like objects or projectiles by a landslide and it seems that very few people lose their phantom touch over time a major hunk of people reported that their phantom touch actually increased rather than desensitized it's a pretty clear link to how immersed people can actually get themselves it was a pretty even split on whether or not people actively sought out experiencing fandom touch and although most people have not engaged in sexual activity it seems that typically when they do it's because the partners involved experience it together finally there was no clear trend towards whether or not people shared the information with others that they have phantom touch or not that's a rough summary of my data findings thanks to everyone who participated because this is a really valuable study of something that hasn't really been evaluated by science before especially at this size so we feel like we have a pretty dang good grasp of how phantom touch is experienced now obviously it's a widespread phenomena across vr users but i've been pondering this one question why does this happen so of course i dove into research science mode pretty deeply to better help explain what we're actually feeling now this is a lot more of a difficult task than you might think the problem with vr research is that virtual reality is still such a young topic most people don't even have access to vr headsets until only the past few years so it's only just now that interest in it is finally peaking that's why i dug up some interesting information and even talked to an applied psychologist vr expert about the subject so hi i am virtual lilly i am an applied psychologist and criminologist during my degree um i was actually doing an academic paper on um phantom sense and applications it just needs to be accepted by the approval process unfortunately what you're looking for is um research on proprioception and proprioceptive drift it's this idea of uh where our body is that then tell our brain hey my body is moving and doing this in this space your brain actually doesn't know what your body is all the time it's a top-down process and then we decide to do something really stupid and mess with millions of years of evolution by slapping a piece of plastic to our heads hijacks all of these senses proprioception is often referred to by scientists as our sixth sense i see dead people it's our ability to be aware of our bodies position and movements without being totally conscious of them at every given moment without it we'd be totally uncoordinated going anywhere or know our own strength this works in conjunction with the extrastriate body area which is the part of our brains involved in visual perception of body parts we also know that the brain has a pretty intense habit of filling in visual gaps think of the old photo of the dress people see it as either black and blue or as white and gold because of how our brains perceive the colors by filling in the gaps you can also see in this classic mind trick where the squares are the exact same color but look darker and lighter because of how we assume the shadows are cast now the way our brains tend to process this sort of information is through something called top-down processing this is how perceptions will start out as a general big picture idea before our brains move to analyzing the specifics and details this connects directly to how our brains fill in the blanks like previously mentioned top-down processing is what leads to stuff like those stupid typos you always make in email messages you see what you think should be there rather than what is so when we connect all these ideas we get an idea of how our brains perceive our bodies in the first place and how often we can easily get tricked now with that in mind this brings us closer to one very important experiment that ties in directly with phantom touch itself the rubber hand experiment the rubber hand experiment is essentially this you take a curtain and on one side you conceal your hand to where you can't see it on the visible side there is a dummy hand that looks like it's attached to you then the administrator in front of you brushes both of the hands lightly but what happens is that your brain sees the rubber hand being touched and assigns the feeling in your brain to the fake hand following so far well this is where things start to get interesting after synchronously stroking the hands for a while the administrator then can start to brush them asynchronously but when some people watch this they start to feel the strokes on the fake hand when they're not actually really feeling them kind of spooky right this is where the proprioceptive drift comes in the drifting feeling is when all of a sudden your sense of proprioception is shifted in your mind meaning you are hallucinating the tactile feeling of being touched this also ties into synesthesia when your brain experiences one of your senses through another for example i personally have graphene color synesthesia so that when i look at letters and numbers etc they're all assigned a specific color in my mind's eye mere touch synaesthesia is when someone feels a touch sensation by watching someone else actually get touched like watching someone get a shot and feeling a prick in your arm or when a movie character gets shot and feeling that shirt pain in your chest there's not a lot of true research available on phantom touch besides a few short studies this goes for vr in general but through analyzing proprioceptive drift feelings of synesthesia or even suggestive states of hypnosis there's a lot of explanations tied together that create this unique and powerful experience that many of us vr users feel so whether you have phantom touch already or don't and are interested in experiencing it there are ways to train yourself into feeling it that's why i threw together a special demo to watch one of my friends being trained to feel phantom touch first hand my name is sen and i make like asmr and phantom touch videos like relaxation videos i basically do phantom touch i've learned that uh how to move so that people can sort of feel things or things that help them relax what you really want to do is sort of tell lies with your emotions that allow people to see or feel something that's not what they should so the idea is that if you move in a predictable way if you move in a way that people are expecting it's more likely they're going to feel something i'm just the guinea pig right like that's all i mean like that's all i'm here for really i don't have much experience with phantom touch i feel little things every now and then you know like standard phantom touch senses like you know like someone touching you i don't really register too well so you can place your hand into my hand and here's how i'm going to start i'm going to slowly bring my hand up and make contact to the inside of your elbow like this and pull back towards your hand like this and then both arms or both hands alongside your arm like this coming down and then i'm going to stop right at the end like i did before and just hold for a second you might feel some warmth this is someone holding class your hand and then i'm gonna pull away like okay jesus christ this is should be illegal what you're doing to me right now what the hell i'm gonna put one hand over your eye and one over mine and this is a mirrored touch a lot of asm artists do this mirror motion and what's really cool about this is that because you can see what i'm doing over my face it's a reference point so you know where i am over you're like that both hands are going under your chin both hands pulling away from your chin like that how is that [Laughter] i don't think i've ever been that immersed like ever that was a lot i think i need a moment like at first i wasn't really like feeling it when he grasped like my hands like this like i actually felt the warmth it was like a gradual like build the more he like went through with all the stuff that he did it wasn't like you know like someone like clasping on your hands like regularly like it was like there was a difference like about it at least like to me it's like you know like getting like vegan food and then like eating it it's like well it like it's kind of there but like i mean like not i mean like this isn't like the real thing but like it's kind of there not everyone can experience phantom touch and that's okay everyone perceives their world differently if you're really curious more about inducing phantom touch in yourself i have a few final tips for you increase the quality of your vr headset get full body and finger tracking find a main avatar that you mentally connect with try hypnosis or focus training like we showed in this video or if it's legal where you live substances can also increase immersion i've felt fandom touch but not all the time but if there's one takeaway i've learned from all of this it's that your perception of what's real is your reality physical or not i hope you learned something interesting from this video and hope you'll stick around for more interesting vr topics just like this comment your thoughts on fandom touch and of course i've got one final message anything else you want to say then like and subscribe anyways thank you so much for watching i've been your host fia and i'll see you in the next video bye [Music] special thanks to this month's patreon members and virtual vips black amethyst diamond klugelay mr cheerio neopossum scoremount [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Virtual Reality Show

Views: 457,968

Keywords: virtual reality, vr, phantom touch, phantom touch vrchat, vr phantom touch, phantom sense, haptics, vr haptics, haptic suit, haptic gloves, vr haptic gloves, virtual reality haptics, oculus, quest 2, oculus quest 2, meta quest 2, quest 2 update, vrchat, vrchat avatars, full body tracking, vrchat full body tracking, full body tracking vr, fbt, force feedback gloves, immersion, thrillseeker, phenomena, futurism, psychology, rubber hand experiement, proprioceptive drift, meta, metaverse

Id: XLmmHVzOVak

Length: 15min 27sec (927 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2022