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Brain Holds Hand at Arm's Length from Reality

It’s probably happened to you: a friend says, “I know this place like the back of my hand,” and then proceeds to get you hopelessly lost. Well, it could be that they really did know it like the back of their hand. Because researchers have found that people don’t actually know their hands as well as they think they do. The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Matthew Longo and Patrick Haggard, URL to be posted shortly.]
你可能有过这样的经历:一个朋友跟你说:“我对这块地方可是了如指掌!”结果却带着你找不着北了。不过,有可能你朋友真的对那块地方了如“指掌”,因为有研究人员发现其实人们并不像他们想象的那样了解自己的双手。这项研究发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上。

We all have “mental representations” of our body parts. So when our hands or feet are out of sight, we still know pretty much where they are and what they look like. But just how accurate is our mental picture?
我们都对身体各部位有“心理表征”。因此,就算我们的手脚不在视线范围之内,我们也知道它们在哪里,它们长什么样。不过问题是这主观意识中的画面到底有多准确呢?

Scientists had volunteers place one hand, palm down, under a board. And they asked the subjects to guess, by pointing to the board with their other hand, where their hidden knuckles and fingertips lay.
科学家让志愿者们把一只手放在一块板下,手心向下,然后让他们用另一只手隔着板指出板下那只手的指关节和指尖的位置。

The results? Participants thought their hands were about two thirds wider and one third shorter than they really were. And their finger length estimates got worse as they moved away from their thumbs. That’s interesting, because finger sensitivity declines as you head towards the pinky. So our mental body maps seem to reflect our ability to feel. Oh, and for their gripping results, let’s give the researchers a hand.
结果是什么呢?这些志愿者意识当中的手要比实际尺寸要宽了约2/3、短了约1/3。而且其他四根手指距离大拇指越远,他们对这四根手指长度的估计就越不准确。这是个有趣的现象,因为随着手指向小指方向移动,手指敏感度会降低。所以,我们主观意识中的这些画面貌似能反映我们的感觉能力。噢~让我们为这伟大的发现鼓掌吧~~

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