Martian Brothel

"Perky Pat Playset" by Steve Young

Cognitive researcher, neuroscientst and European hottie Henrik Ehrsson and his colleagues at the Karolinska Institutet have already mastered the existential art of illusory body-swapping — tricking the brain into believing that it has “swapped” bodies with another humanoid form.

Now this “eccentric” research is being taken a step further by playing with peoples’ perceptions of body size.

Ehrsson et al. have successfully tricked people into perceiving the world as if they were as tiny as a Barbie-like doll or as giant as a 14-foot mannequin. Basically, this means that subjects percieved the environments around them as if they were the body-size they were primed to “perceptually swap” with . . . So, if you were primed to swap bodies with a Barbie doll, the objects around you would look really, really big.

I know. Weird. Just think Alice’s “Eat Me” cakes — but all in your head.

AREN'T THESE NERDS HOT? Karolinska Institute in Sweden (from left) Arvid Guterstam, Henrik Ehrsson and Björn van der Hoort pose with the tiny, medium-size and giant mannequins used in the study. (Photo: Staffan Larsson, Copyright Staffan Larsson/Henrik Ehrsson)

Now, all we need is some Can-D or Chew-Z, so we can feed your head.

Ehrsson and his colleagues may claim that their research is the first step in mind-controlled robotics, but we Martians are pretty sure that they’ve been hired by Martian Mattel to design the new generation Perky Pat Playsets.

If you don’t know what a Perky Pat Playset is, you’ve never been bored on Mars.