What does BIV mean in Science Fiction?

Brain in a vat

In philosophy, the brain in a vat is an element used in a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of our ideas of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, and meaning. It is based on an idea, common to many science fiction stories, that a mad scientist, machine, or other entity might remove a person's brain from the body, suspend it in a vat of life-sustaining liquid, and connect its neurons by wires to a supercomputer which would provide it with electrical impulses identical to those the brain normally receives. According to such stories, the computer would then be simulating reality and the person with the "disembodied" brain would continue to have perfectly normal conscious experiences without these being related to objects or events in the real world. The simplest use of brain-in-a-vat scenarios is as an argument for philosophical skepticism and solipsism.

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