25 Menschen lernten das Fliegen mit virtuellen Flügeln. Nach dem Flugtraining begann das Gehirn, Flügel eher wie echte Gliedmaßen zu behandeln
25 people learned to fly with virtual wings. Here’s how the brain changed
25 Menschen lernten das Fliegen mit virtuellen Flügeln. Nach dem Flugtraining begann das Gehirn, Flügel eher wie echte Gliedmaßen zu behandeln
25 people learned to fly with virtual wings. Here’s how the brain changed
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In *X-Men*, Warren Worthington III sprouts huge white wings from his back and shoots into the sky. Scientists have yet to fully turn the comic book gift from fiction into fact, but virtual reality is offering hints of what it’s like to learn to fly.
After training to use virtual wings, [people’s brains responded to wings more similarly to how they respond to real limbs](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2026.117320), making wings seem more like body parts, researchers report May 7 in *Cell Reports*.
“This is an intriguing study that nicely demonstrates how plastic the brain is,” says cognitive neuroscientist Jane Aspell of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England. “If the brain can incorporate something as unhuman as a wing, it may also be able to incorporate many other kinds of limb enhancements.”
[**Read more here**](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/virtual-wings-brain-changes?utm_source=Reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=rmh) **and the** [**research article here**](https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(26)00398-0?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2211124726003980%3Fshowall%3Dtrue)**.**
Isn’t this how all tools work for us
> “This is an intriguing study that nicely demonstrates how plastic the brain is,”
I’m going to go out on a limb and call this one of the biggest under appreciated ideas out there.
Related oddity to me, we don’t talk/think enough about human psychology when it comes to political messaging/policy
> That firsthand experience transformed participants’ understanding of flight in ways that abstract knowledge cannot, Wei says. This could apply to other technologies and artificial senses, allowing people to experience “reality” in ever more varied ways.
> “In the future, we may spend a great deal of time in VR,” Wei says. “We are very interested in what that could mean for the human brain.”
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Heard a story about someone that wore one or more magnetometers on his body for six+ months.
Eventually it became something like an extra sense for him, aka, the sense of where „north“ is.
Wish I could remember more about the study–anyone know what I’m talking about here?
I’d be curious to know (but wouldn’t want anyone to find out, in reality) if, after going through this training, a study subject who ingested a hallucinogen would be more inclined to try to fly.
Angel mode is pre installed but is paywalled and the cost is death.
If this lets me experience flight in VR then I am excited. I’ve always wanted to soar through the clouds but my bones are too heavy.
And yet people question the value of sucking the strap. Especially for transgender men, this study proves that it’s more than plastic
I notice this (as I’m sure most people do) when playing a video game. My brain is thinking „walk forward“ and I make the character walk forward. My brain doesn’t feel like it’s going, „push the stick forward or hold down the „w“ key“