Virtual Reality and Physical Trauma
How realistic is the trope that wounds received in a virtual reality (VR) transfer to our own?
Examples: In the Matrix (movie) and Neuromancer (novel), cuts, scrapes, and bruises seemingly jump from immaterial to the material world.
Does this vary by VR type? Current VR technology doesn't seem to transfer medical conditions, but does this change somehow?
Is this purely a mind"“over"“matter phenomena where a body is "tricked" into wounding itself?
In what sense could VR influence biological processes?
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1 answer
Like Cort Ammon says, it would depend on how your VR functions. The brain has mechanisms that prevent what's going on in your brain to affect your body in any way: that's what happens when you're dreaming. While dreaming, you can believe yourself running, falling, getting hurt, even dying. None of this affects your body in any way. So if you want your VR to be safe, that's doable. The only thing you'd have to consider is the effects of prolonged immobility on the body. (Not moving for over 2 hours would affect circulation and cause bedsores. That's why people roll over in their sleep.)
Can you make the VR transfer injuries to the body? Having access to the brain, you can transfer muscle contractions, which could cause damage to capillaries (causing bruising and pain), you can damage the muscle, you can even break bones. You can arrest breathing. (Though feinting would hopefully disconnect the VR, prompting starting breathing again?) You can send the heart into a fatal arrhythmia, but that would have to be very deliberate. I do not see how you can break skin, unless you cause a person to physically do it to himself (basically induced self-harm while sleepwalking). Again, however, all of this is harder to set up than a safe VR, so someone would have to deliberately want the kind of VR that can hurt you.
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