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Story
Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'
Original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-67657-w
FTA:

> With a third group of participants, they used a non-invasive technique called transcranial alternating current stimulation to speed up or slow down the frequency of a person's alpha waves. And sure enough, this seemed to correlate with how real a fake hand felt.

I know this is largely orthogonal to the article, and I know what “non-invasive” means and why it’s used in this sentence, but it made me chuckle - “this technique that changed the subject’s brain waves sufficient to literally impact their sense of self - but don’t worry! It’s non-invasive!”

If invasive means using surgical tools to open up the skin and organs, then non-invasive means all things that don't require surgical tools.

OTH nearly all brain experiments are non-invasive. Did they mean to use the word to downplay how seriously impacting the experiment was?

i guess putting your head in a microwave would also be considered "non-invasive" according to this logic. makes sense!
It makes me think of the "discombobulator" which Trump said was used in the raid to capture Maduro, and is according to speculation a Pulse-Modulated High-Power Microwave. I wouldn't be surprised if people call that "non-invasive" too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46754411

  • taneq
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It’s not an invasion, it’s just a “special operation”!
The manipulation part is what fascinates me. They didn't just correlate alpha wave frequency with ownership perception. They used transcranial stimulation to artificially speed up or slow down the waves, and the subjective experience changed accordingly.

That's a pretty direct causal link between a measurable brain state and something as fundamental as "where does my body end?"

Thanks claude
The idea of "ownership of a body" made me think about a quote I heard a long time ago, while talking amongst musicians while waiting to get up and perform. It felt like some secret knowledge that I gained privilege to, while somewhat inebriated and it hasn't left me since.

> I _have_ a body, I _am_ a soul.

Maybe what they're identifying is the first half of that statement, how we interpret the former, through the presence of the latter.

You can do that with mental phenomenon too - eg, having memories, feelings, consciousness, thoughts. All aspects of "I" that might be present or not - so they can't really be said to be you as much as possessed by you for a moment. Insofar as a soul exists for you to be ... it is quite small.
Original Paper: Parietal alpha frequency shapes own-body perception by modulating the temporal integration of bodily signals, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-67657-w

https://news.ki.se/how-brain-waves-shape-our-sense-of-self

This has me thinking of Pluribus
So, how far does the human electric field extend outside the body? May be only picovolts or in that range... But can we measure that? Does the field exist past our skin?

Can things like meditation modify that? Or how about stuff like OOBE's like what some folks call astral projection? What do those practices to to the body's electric field?

So maybe tin foil hats can be useful after all?
  • taneq
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Wow, that’s really interesting! It seems like alpha waves are the ‘tick rate’ of this system, and some set number of ticks are required to update the body model?
I don't exist and that's okay
  • hcs
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Flips switch

How about now?

  • taneq
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Have you tried turning your sense of self off and on again?
shh the buddhists are sensitive (got dunked on by Ram)