Brain stimulation produces shadow feeling
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-09-21 10:01 LONDON - Stimulating a certain area of the brain
can produce a creepy feeling that someone is watching you when no one is,
scientists said on Wednesday.
Swiss researchers made the discovery while evaluating a young woman for
surgery to treat epilepsy. They believe their finding could help explain
feelings such as paranoia which afflict patients suffering from schizophrenia.
When they electrically stimulated the left temporoparietal junction in her
brain, which is linked to self-other distinction and self-processing, she
thought someone was standing behind her.
If they repeated the stimulus while she leaned forward and grabbed her knees
she had an unpleasant sensation that the shadowy figure was embracing her.
"Our findings may be a step towards understanding the mechanisms behind
psychiatric manifestations such as paranoia, persecution and alien control,"
said Olaf Blanke, of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, in the
journal Nature.
The feeling that someone is lurking nearby has been described by patients
suffering from psychological and neurological problems. The researchers believe
the woman was experiencing a perception of her own body.
"Although our patient was aware of the similarity between her own postural
and positional features and those of the illusory person, she did not recognise
that that person was an illusion of her own body, like many deluded
schizophrenia patients," Blanke added.
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