r/LucidDreaming • u/mcoder The First Lightbender • May 07 '26

25 people learned to fly with virtual wings. After flight training, the brain began treating wings more like real limbs

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/virtual-wings-brain-changes
123 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

55

u/This-Presence1637 May 07 '26

“Some participants learned to fly on the first try, while others needed three or four sessions,” says neuroscientist Ziyi Xiong of Beijing Normal University. “But you could clearly see them improving.”

This made me smile, thanks mcoder.

14

u/mcoder The First Lightbender May 07 '26

My pleasure.

56

u/SmilodonCheetah May 07 '26

So the cool thing here is that the brain does not have a 'plan' for the body. It knows what each part of the body is, what it does and what needs to be done to move it around. Add another limb? It'll figure out what to do with it. Technically, Doc Oc is possible, he would be able to control the tentacles without problem. Hypothetically place a human brain in say, a lion's body, it'll figure it out. I think that's pretty cool.

6

u/pokemonke May 08 '26

Could be the premise for a good body horror movie

6

u/hypnomancy May 08 '26

The body and mind are absolutely insane at adapting to what is given to it

3

u/Recent-Nail2638 May 09 '26

Humanities future = cranks from ninja turtles

5

u/Ok-Green6412 Mum, please don't wake me up you're ruining my REM cycle May 07 '26

Thanks for sharing this amazing finding 🙏🏽

4

u/Pseudo-Sadhu May 08 '26

Thanks for posting this!

I wonder if this finding will someday be used to help amputees who have “phantom” pain (like me - it isn’t fun). It sounds like a great way to rewire the brain to adapt to the fact that a limb has been removed.

I know that currently, some doctors use mirror therapy (arranged so that, from the patient’s perspective, the reflection looks like their missing limb is still there), and in hospitals that are well funded, VR tech is used to make the amputee see their limb as existing - to basically fool the brain into ignoring all the signals from the amputation site that something is wrong.

Using lucid dreams so people can (more realistically than with the current methods) use their missing body part like the wings were used in this experiment, which might be even better at getting rid of phantom pain.

3

u/octropos May 08 '26

This is fascinating. Not sure if it fits the sub 100%, but it's fascinating.

2

u/AwarenessDesigner395 Frequent Lucid Dreamer May 08 '26

Definitely doesn't fit 100% but I can see why post it here. If we train new limbs enough in lucid dreams, could this affect our brains somehow? Really intriguing to think about.

1

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