Comment by roughly
7 hours ago
FTA:
> With a third group of participants, they used a non-invasive technique called transcranial alternating current stimulation to speed up or slow down the frequency of a person's alpha waves. And sure enough, this seemed to correlate with how real a fake hand felt.
I know this is largely orthogonal to the article, and I know what “non-invasive” means and why it’s used in this sentence, but it made me chuckle - “this technique that changed the subject’s brain waves sufficient to literally impact their sense of self - but don’t worry! It’s non-invasive!”
i guess putting your head in a microwave would also be considered "non-invasive" according to this logic. makes sense!
“...it's not out of the question that you might have a very minor case of serious brain damage. But don't be alarmed all right...[it’s non-invasive]”
It’s not an invasion, it’s just a “special operation”!
[flagged]
Nah, in the context of weaponry it is called "less than lethal".
If invasive means using surgical tools to open up the skin and organs, then non-invasive means all things that don't require surgical tools.
OTH nearly all brain experiments are non-invasive. Did they mean to use the word to downplay how seriously impacting the experiment was?
Many types of brain stimulation require electrodes placed inside the skull. The term was likely chosen to differentiate this technique from those.