Introduction music with *blips & bloops*
hi hi hi hi hi thanks for coming back for the finishing touches on my episodes
about touch I am Trace! This has been a crazy
experiment. I really hope that you've enjoyed it earlier we talked about what
touch is physically, what it means emotionally, how we need it, and what
happens if we don't have it but now you're aware touching is a thing it's a
big thing and we all took it for granted before today I'm gonna blow your mind a
little and then later I'm gonna do it a little more and you know the idea of an
optical illusion we're talking about touch illusions so stick around and
let's kick into this this is gonna be so fun touch is a strange sense it's
complicated it's hard to imagine having five different types of eyes and making
sense of the world writer several different years all working together to
hear the world around you touch is like that though remember you've got all of
these different cells coming your fingertips some in your hairy skin some
in side of your own body and they're all doing one or two things and together
they give you this unified super-sensitive essential sense and that
takes up a huge part of our body literally all of our skin all of our
insides and some of our emotional processing in our brain as well and yet
because it's all of these different things working together you can trick it
rather easily and in fact so picture this I blindfold you I hand you an
embossed paper with a raised relief of a shape say a car or a pair of scissors
you know something common you would have a lot of problem figuring out what that
is even with an embossed piece of paper
with a raised relief feeling it alone with contour that isn't enough
information for the brain usually for most people even with all our powers of
touch it might be different for people that are used to handling things and
that's something that's really fascinating you can train your sense of
touch to be more sensitive Diana talked about that a little bit earlier but
touch can change our moods and affect our brains and be overwhelming it's not
unbeatable you can try this at home if you've got
an embossed card with something on it or you're able to make something like that
you can even use paint but it's not gonna be even so it might be hard this
other one though you can try at home and it's
fascinating grab a friend and a rubber or fake hand from like a Halloween store
or a mannequin or something like that put your arms on the table with your
palms down so move one hand over and hide it behind something like a
boardgame box or something where the person can't see their own hand but the
partner they can see the hand the fake hand should be in between the two so
well look if you you know didn't pay attention to where the arm was that they
have one fake hand and one real hand now the person who's doing the
experiment should take a paintbrush in each of their hands to paint brushes and
touch the backs of the fake hand and the real hand at the same time it might seem
strange but if the partner strokes the fake hand and the real hand softly and
slowly with the same exact movement over and over within a minute or two the
person who cannot see their real hand and only can see their fake hand will
fall victim to the touch illusion they will think of the fake hand as their own
hand their brain will move the touch inside their bodies remap it to the fake
hand in studies done with this over and over again when they ask the subject to
use their free hand to point to their hand there their other hand they point
to the fake one they don't reach over the game box and say all my hands over
here they just point to the fake one and they say oh that's my hand right there
the body takes ownership of the fake hand it's amazing emitted Lee it might
be tough to do at home you might have to try it a few times but it works and it
is crazy an fMRI study found that the premotor
cortex was engaged while the stroking was the same if you don't stroke the
hands at the same time or at the different meter or whatever it won't
work part of the brain used for visual and touch processing takes over this
fake hand site students are subjected to this all the time they do the whole
experiment and then someone will smash the rubber hand with a hammer and the
students will freak out because neuroscience studies have found quote
the brain no longer considers that fake hand as outside of the body but instead
part of the body fact if you look in the brain with fMRI
studies there's decrease in activity in the brain for where the hand that was
behind the box was good we didn't need it and then amazing anyway a 20-18 study
in nature used this rubber hand illusion they used the same setup but they had
the first-person view of an experiment or first person is familiar to some of
the gamers but it essentially means like imagine you were looking out of somebody
else's eyes so even though I'm sitting here I would be looking like you we're
looking at me so I would see my hands but I'd also see your hands little
confusing regardless they saw four hands and instead of one fake in one real hand
they saw their own and someone else's the participants would be told to tap
their index fingers they would tap their index finger and the experimenter
remember they're looking out from the experimenters view with like a little
camera the experimenter would imitate it with their own index finger they would
use a paintbrush and touch the back of people's hands and they would do it in
sync with all four of the hands and the amazing thing is you didn't think oh
these two hands are mine in these two hands or someone else's which is maybe
where you thought this was going right it would take ownership of the
experimenters hands no no they took ownership of all four of the hands if
they did this experiment right you were a four handed person for like a few
minutes while this experiment was going on if they imitated what motions that
you wanted to be doing and they did it well enough you had four hands or at
least your brain thought you did super weird right
lots of discussions in this study it is not perfect but it is super cool concept
and it just illustrates again that the brain is super plastic and amazing it's
not the only touch illusion I wanted to do one that you can do at home for sure
so I kept looking through and I found this one so grab let me grab one no
tripod monopod go grab a rod a broomstick handle a curtain rod you know
a table leg whatever a stick grab something this is a tripod monopod
two cuts I'm in a studio this is what I got okay so grab that blindfold yourself
and have a friend tap on the rod or tap on
things around your house and even blindfolded you're gonna have a good
idea of where on the rod they touched a 20-18 study in nature and another one in
2019 in Current Biology both looked into this concept and honestly it's been
looked at for centuries Descartes wrote about it
blind people were using tools to enhance their touch and they wanted to know what
was happening centuries ago and this is the ultimate
touch illusion because your brain treats the tool like it's part of your body
it's the primary somatosensory cortex the posterior parietal cortex both
regions for touch working together to create an extension of your body using
the pacinian receptors in 400 trials with only 16 people mind you they guest
touches on the rod correctly 96% of the time so either those 16 people were
really good they felt or perhaps this is something that the brain is really good
at doing they even looked at their brains and the timing of the signals
from the rod that they were holding or a touch on their own arm were extremely
similar only about 20 milliseconds from the touch on either spot to recognition
in the brain now you might be wondering if this is valuable why do all you need
to know it well it's really cool for people with phantom limb pain phantom
limb pain is the idea that you still feel a limb that no longer exists so
imagine you got in a car crash and your limb was still attached to you after the
crash but it was amputated in a surgery later you might have had a pain in your
hand during you know the recovery period and once it was amputated your brain
never resolved that pain it was like an unread email in your inbox that you can
access but you can still see the notification now imagine that it was
with pain oh so your amputated at the elbow but the brain thinks your hand
hurts it's almost like the brain is pinging your limb and finds nothing
this illusion can convince people with that affliction that the fake hand is
their hand it's like tricking it into thinking it's
there and you can treat the pain on the fake hand and treat the
to limb pain you can do this with a mirror box where you stick your hand in
and you can see your other hand you can do this with VR which is really
really interesting you put on VR goggles and then within the VR space you treat
the phantom limb pain and people come out of it and they feel treated there's
a caveat of course that methodologies of studies on this especially with VR are a
bit shaky that doesn't mean it doesn't work for some people but it's not a
generalizable scientific thingy okay I'm just gonna point that out cuz you know
science choke the illusion though is real the treatments are a bit more
research he is needed e it's not the same as the rubber hand you don't own
the tool but you recognize that it is part of the body or connected to the
body it shows the power of the brain to extrapolate and adapt so speaking of
that if you can do that with a rod just a stick what about with technology
you've probably heard of haptic technology haptic means touch and motion
and most commonly the sense of like a clicky Macbook right not actually
physically clicking if you turn the power off nothing happens it's a
vibration so imagine the vibration of something like a phone when you touch
keys on a keyboard or the vibration of a click thing that doesn't actually click
what it is actually doing is vibrating because that's how touch actually works
and so most haptic tech involves vibrations that simulate touch because
again that is what touch really is it's not just contact it's a specific level
of vibration in fact some of the cells that connect to your touch system some
of the cells that we've talked about they don't actually just feel
deformations of their membranes they can feel vibrations which is pretty cool so
let's push the envelope here just a little bit into the edge of science a
20-19 nature paper using synthetic skin it's only a four centimeter square used
vibrations to feel what was going on and that can be done with air with
vibrations with lots of different things but there are millions of receptors all
over your body and they all have different purposes they were listening
for different things so this synthetic skin would pick up those vibrations and
translate them to electrical signals and and to the brain would be a long time
before we get anywhere with this technology as a whole but imagine a
veteran who lost an arm their prosthetic is a tool not unlike the rod if you
touch it your brain can extrapolate where you touched it if you have that
rod and you move and it moves your brain is gonna take over and own that
prosthetic not unlike the rubber hand illusion you're essentially creating a
live one if you add robotics and sophisticated computers with something
like this synthetic skin that can translate stuff back to the brain using
haptics or vibrations you could create a prosthetic that the brain thinks of as
our own hand that could feel using the same brain regions as the rest of your
body and could do it all naturally can you imagine that people have and they're
working on it there is nothing out there in our sensation like touch touches warm
soft tacky it's gritty there's a texture to skin to fabric a give-and-take in
hair or the back of someone's hand the electricity that we feel when we touch
someone that we have a crush on all of that and so much more it's not just a
signal going to the brain touching is so much after all of this is over go touch
someone you know hug them hold their hand when you hug them by the way hug
them for at least 20 seconds because that's when you're gonna release those
feel-good hormones of course make sure you have their permission consent very
important sit close to people who are comfortable with that hold someone's
hand even a friend hold their hand and tell them they are important to you even
if they're not a sexual partner this is not a sex thing this is a friend thing
this is a contact thing a connection thing you'd be surprised how much a
touch like that will connect to human beings no matter how emotionally open to
telling your friends that you love them and miss them because I have really come
around on that in my adult time and I really can't express how much it has
changed my relationship with my friends to say to my friends I love them
has changed some of our relationships only for the better if you can't touch
someone physically touch them emotionally give them a gift send it to
their house it's right I'm a card right somebody a letter that will help because
you were part of it you can also do something even simpler that's really
popular online right now learn to dance I know many people only dance when they
want to bang dancing is not sexual dancing is moving with music we use it
as a kind of gateway into sex but that's not what it is dancing is fun dancing is
friendly you can dance with friends with Gramma's with strangers but you have to
touch someone to dance another way that you can get touch without having an
emotional connection that is maybe overwhelming get your nails done guys do
this I love getting my nails done it is awesome not only do they look nice but
it's nice to have someone massage your hands and your legs and it's
professional touching and because of that everyone is consented and you're
gonna feel good afterward touch is serious stuff it is fundamental human
things and though we all recognize that people are gonna be missing it if they
lose their sight if they can't hear anymore you can't taste your smell when
you ask somebody oh what sense would you lose if you could lose one no one says
touch the loss of touch is either a joke or some kind of morbid superpower or
just something to move the story along because actually losing touch would be
devastating touch is amazing and I hope that after all of this you now
understand how much more fidelity you have with your body so we're talking
about touching things and that stimulates our tactile sense right but
it's not just like randomly touching stuff in your environment you want to be
more tactile during this stay at home time when we're physical distancing so
maybe you want to craft or draw there's a drawing class on Skillshare that's
really good I'm obsessed with coffee and making coffee is super tactile you're
grinding and you're pouring you're wondering how brew masters put flavors
in the beer and make beer in general you can learn that on Skillshare everyone at
home right now is doing sourdough recipes on my Instagram like everybody
but you can learn about dough on Skillshare too Skillshare is an online
community of creative learners and we're teaching and learning all the time with
each other things like graphic design and habit
formation marketing or business web development video music production I've
learned things for uno dos of tres on Skillshare and for the first thousand
people who click this link you're gonna get Skillshare premium faux free for two
months and if it's faux free it's foamy if you try Skillshare you're gonna
support unit dose of trees so you can feel good about that and you get a thing
and now that we're in our space is all the time and one of my space to look
nice so I went to the class style your space bringing creativity to interior
design and it's so cool to start to understand that if I put this thing here
and that thing there I'm starting to make the room look better and more
comfortable and not just cluttered like I just scattered things around the house
again you can try Skillshare premium for two months for free with my link right
here Skillshare loves creative and curious people who are lifelong learners
and I was like I don't some people like that
and you trying it for free supports me making more of this show so thanks if
you do speaking of the show let's go back right now millions of people are
living in a world without touch not just in prisons like I mentioned earlier not
just without limbs like I mentioned earlier not people with disorders that I
mentioned earlier everyday humans everywhere in the world
including all of the people in prisons and with no limbs and people with
disabilities this Kovan 19 virus has driven us apart physically and
emotionally and I would hope that this experience that we're all sharing
everywhere in the world will give us empathy and understanding for each other
we would get a little bit of an overview affect astronauts feel that kinship to
the earth because they are held apart from it they can only look out their
windows and this is the same thing that is happening to us it's like a touch
overview effect and I don't know about you but I'm gonna do a lot when we're
allowed to go out I'm gonna go on hikes and I've dinner with friends and I'm
gonna go to the beach and you know lay on the grass and roll around like a dog
Egon it's gonna be great I was already a hugger but I'm gonna hug even more and
I'm gonna really hug you never know I'm gonna do as much as I can when our
largest organ our skin filled with millions of receptors comes into
physical contact with someone else's largest organ it is meaningful even if
it's casual even if it's accidental even if it's completely innocent it means
something when was the last time you let yourself be touched when was the last
time you someone think about it and remember that
when you can touch anyone that can sense anytime you want I leave you with this
poem titled first date on Monday I saw a boy on Tuesday I heard his name on
Wednesday I touched his hand on Thursday I tasted
chocolate on Friday I smelled roses on Saturday we went on a date the author is
Viridiana truly oh they're 11 it's amazing
reach out and touch someone my friends subscribe for all of the episodes in
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them this is the first time I've tried it on this channel I really enjoy it I
think it's really fun you get a little more of me and then which I really love
and I feel like we have a better connection so let me know what you feel
you know literally let me know you feel okay thank you for sticking with me all
of this way wow I think my voice is going this dose of tres experiment is
over for now but I really want to know your thoughts so tell me in the comments
send me a tweet shoot me an email whatever makes you feel more comfortable
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to each other all the time so thank you from the bottom of my heart I hope that
you are keeping your hands clean I hope you're all safe and I will see you in
the future