Virtual reality works because your brain is easy to convince

Stand on a virtual plank above a virtual drop and your palms sweat. You know the floor is carpet. Your body doesn’t care. Researchers call that feeling presence, and it’s the reason virtual reality is interesting to people who study perception and not only people who play games.

The groundwork predates modern headsets. In 1998 two researchers showed that if people watched a rubber hand being stroked in sync with their own hidden hand, many started to feel the rubber hand as part of their body. The brain builds its sense of self from matching signals, and it will accept a fake if the signals line up. VR and augmented reality scale that trick to a whole environment.

This section covers headsets, augmented reality, avatars and the metaverse projects that keep getting announced, but always from the user’s side: what the experience does to perception, memory and behavior, and where the line between a convincing representation and reality actually sits.