The human mind is an incredible thing, so complex it allows us to dream and invent all kinds of things, without even cracking the surface of understanding how our brain works. People have always been fascinated with illusion, with magic, with the things that seem impossible but actually are being performed right in front of their eyes. Illusions have for long been used by magicians, having as a sole purpose entertainment and a good show.

Recently, Swedish researchers have been working with illusion displaying some fantastic abilities of the human mind. The scientists used illusions to trick the minds of their volunteers to believe that the members of mannequins were in fact their own. The experiment went so far as they actually made people believe that they swapped bodies with another.

The Swedish researchers tricked the volunteers with the power of perception. They started off by placing a plastic mannequin hand where the volunteer’s hand was, and struck the plastic hand and the real one at the same time. The effect was spectacular as the man interpreted like sensations were being transmitted through the piece of plastic shaped like a hand.

The experiments didn’t stop here as a lot of things can be done with perception and illusion and with today’s technological advances. Using digital cameras volunteers were experiencing a truly stereoscopic imaging from around the room. Cameras were placed on mannequins and head displays showing exactly the mannequins perspective was mounted on people.

Using this trick, the volunteers were actually tricked into believing that their body was not their own any more and that their heads have been swapped on someone else’s body. The highlight of the experiment was when scientists managed to trick the volunteer’s brains into thinking that their bodies were swapped between each other, showing how easy to influence our brain really is.

These experiments, besides sounding like a lot of fun, prove that our power to imagine and to actually impose a false reality based on appearance is in our blood and brain. People were actually tricked into believing and feeling the sensations of a piece of plastic or of bodies that were not their own. The implications go a lot deeper than some magic show and can actually be extended in the realm of sociology and philosophy.

If reality is so easy to fake, how do we know that everything we perceive is in fact real? Is our conception of the person standing next to us on a bus the same with what others see and feel? Sociologists have always stated that society is maintained by our own imagination and that individuals are so special because of the different perceptions on the surrounding world.