The sensation that a ghost is nearby arises in the human brain, Swiss scientists discovered.
Swiss researchers managed to find out which part of the brain creates a sense of the reality of ominous ghosts.
Moreover, in the framework of one of the experiments, the scientists managed to "convince" the volunteers that a disembodied spirit hovers around them.
The research results are published in the journal Current Biology.
Stories about supernatural phenomena are told all over the world, and very often, we are talking about ghosts.
“This is a very vivid feeling. People say that they feel someone's presence, but they do not see this being. But they repeat that they clearly feel this presence,”says Dr. Giulio Rognini, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL).
According to him, this sensation often occurs in people in extreme situations, in climbers or geological prospectors, as well as in people with neurological diseases.
“The amazing thing is that they often say that 'ghosts' repeat their movements or take the same position as they do at this particular moment. That is, if the patient is sitting, the ghost is also sitting. If the patient is standing, then the ghost is standing, and so on,”he says.
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Swiss researchers performed brain scans of 12 people with neurological diseases who had previously stated that they felt the presence of ghosts.
Scientists found that all of these patients suffered from damage to areas of the brain responsible for self-awareness, coordination of movements and control over body position in space.
Then the researchers invited 48 completely healthy people to the laboratory, who had never felt the presence of ghosts or ghosts in their lives, and set up an experiment on them, in which the neural signals sent to these parts of the brain were changed.
Body in space
Participants in the experiment were blindfolded and asked to manipulate a robot in front of them. At the same time, another robot touched their backs, exactly copying their movements.
If the hand movements of the volunteers and the movements of the robot behind them occurred simultaneously, the participants in the experiment did not feel anything unusual.
But if the movements of the robot behind their backs were made with some delay, then a third of the participants in the experiment stated that they felt the presence of an otherworldly spirit in the room. Some even said they sensed the presence of several ghosts, up to four.
In people who sense the presence of ghosts, the brain makes the mistake of mistaking their body for someone else's.
Two volunteers said the sensation was so strange that they asked to stop the experiment.
According to the researchers, these delayed robot responses temporarily altered the functions of the brain regions responsible for self-awareness, coordination of movements and control over the body's position in space.
Scientists believe that in people who sense the presence of ghosts, the brain makes a mistake in determining the specific location of their body in space, and, accordingly, takes their own body for someone else's.
Own - stranger
“Our brain receives several signals at once about the location of our body in space,” says Dr. Rognini.
“Under normal conditions, the brain creates a unified picture of self-awareness based on these signals. But when a failure occurs in the system, be it due to a disease, or, as in this case, the actions of a robot, the brain can create a second coordinate system for our body, and it will perceive this second image not as itself, but as someone something else, like "presence", - explains the scientist.
The researchers say the discovery could help understand the nature of a number of neurological diseases, such as schizophrenia.
