In 1998 Mathew Botvinick and Jonatahan Coen showed for the first time in a way scientific the effectiveness of a trick in which All humans fall without exception. It is called “deception of the rubber hand” and serves for do believe to our brain of being the owners of an limb who is not ours (Below, the video of one of its many executions available on the Internet). Further on we explain better how it works, but before here is the reason why we are talking about it: Not only humans, but also octopus fell us. A team of the University of Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan, with a experiment told in a document published on Current Biology.
How I deceive you the octopus
THE octopus involved in the experiment were six specimens of Callistoctopus ASPILOSOMATISbelonging to a genre commonly known as “night octopus”, which also belongs to a Mediterranean octopusthe meatball (Callistoctopus macropus). The animals were subjected to the same type of Illusion reserved for humans: It consists in hiding an arm with a screen, and in its place place a arm Of eraser. At that point, both arms forcefully rub: after some time, the brain is convinced that the rubber is part of bodyand begins to react to the stimuli accordingly.
In the case of octopusthis means that, after about eight minutes of rubbing, the animals they began to respond to a sudden pinch on arm Of eraser As if they had really been pinched. Some portrayed the other arms, others have tried to escape, still others have changed color: the fact is that there are Cascati allconvinced that the rubber arm they had before the eyes was part of their body. (by the way: let’s continue writing “arm” instead of “tentacle“Because, in the case of octopus, it is the correct word to use).
Because the rubber arm is important
THE octopus night Thus they are added to the list of animals that are fooled by the arm Of eraserand that in addition to us humans It also includes i mice and some monkeys. But why is it important? According to the authors of the study, the fact that also the crashed octopus in the deception of the hand Of eraser indicates that they have the so -called autorkingthat is, the ability of, so to speak, “see yourself” and your body. An idea confirmed by the fact that, when the deception was presented with errors (for example, if the two arms were rubbed but not at the same time), i octopus They stopped believing that the rubber arm was theirs.
The most interesting aspect of the whole matter is that octopus have a system nervous complexbut which has evolved independently from that of vertebrates: yet these molluscs also have the meaning of the self, a feature that therefore has a much more intricate evolutionary story than expected. According to the authors, then, these discoveries can also be applied to the Health humanfor example by going to the root of a condition called asomatognosiain which a person loses the awareness of having one or more parts of the body.
