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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 09 2019, @03:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the uncanny-valley dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4463

This brain region may be why some robots send chills down your spine

A new analysis of brain scans may explain why hyperrealistic androids and animated characters can be creepy.

By measuring people's neural activity as they viewed pictures of humans and robots, researchers identified a region of the brain that seems to underlie the "uncanny valley" effect — the unsettling sensation sometimes caused by robots or animations that look almost, but not quite, human (SN Online: 11/22/13). Better understanding the neural circuitry that causes this feeling may help designers create less unnerving androids.

In research described online July 1 in the Journal of Neuroscience, neuroscientist Fabian Grabenhorst and colleagues took functional MRI scans of 21 volunteers during two activities. In each activity, participants viewed pictures of humans, humanoid robots of varying realism and — to simulate the appearance of hyperrealistic robots — "artificial humans," pictures of people whose features were slightly distorted through plastic surgery and photo editing.

[...] Brain scans revealed that activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, or VMPFC — a region involved in making value judgments — mirrored participants' uncanny valley reactions. VMPFC activity was typically higher in response to more humanlike pictures, but dipped in response to artificial humans. That drop was most pronounced in people with the strongest dislike for artificial humans. Those findings suggest that this region of the brain underpins the uncanny valley sensation, the researchers say.

[...] If the VMPFC is responsible for generating the uncanny valley heebie-jeebies, that may be good news for android designers and animators. Social experiences can change how VMPFC reacts to certain situations, says Grabenhorst, of the University of Cambridge. So positive interactions with an initially creepy robot or avatar may make it less bothersome.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @12:10AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @12:10AM (#865220)

    I heard of it first in reference to computer animation. That's why pixar animated toys for so long, plastic is easy. Its very hard to get something that looks good enough to get past the "uncanny valley" ie the range of things that aren't good enough to pass for real but are so realistic that it looks bad/fake or just makes people uncomfortable.

    Looking for budget/older CGI with human characters will probably turn up some examples.