scientists discover shadow person

Yet another thing that we must keep in mind during the Project:

“Electrical stimulation [to the temporoparietal junction region of the brain] repeatedly produced a feeling of the presence of another person in [the patient's] extra-personal space,” said Olaf Blanke, co-author of the study conducted by a team of researchers from University Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland. ... When the patient sat up, leaned forward and clasped her knees, she felt that the figure was also sitting, embracing her in its arms -- a feeling she described as “unpleasant.” During a language task, in which the seated patient held a card in her right hand, she described the person sitting next to her and trying to interfere with the task. “He wants to take the card ... he doesn’t want me to read,” she said. ... Because it was possible to induce the sensation repeatedly, and because the "shadow person" closely mimicked the patient’s posture and movements, the researchers conclude that the patient was experiencing a perception of her own body. “The strange sensation that somebody is nearby when no one is actually present has been described by psychiatric and neurological patients, as well as by healthy subjects,” said Blanke. Until now, however, it was not understood how the illusion was triggered in the brain. The temporoparietal junction is known to be involved in creating the concept of "self," and the distinction between "self" and "other." According to the researchers, stimulation of this region interfered with the patient’s ability to integrate information about her own body, leading to her experience of a "shadow person."

It could well be that ghosts are only illusions, created by strange vortices of sound and electro-magnetism that the brain tries to interpret, which is all the more reason to definitively study the issue instead of just with cursory sweeps of geiger counters and EMF detectors, or dismissing it all together. Who knows what invisible forms of energy there are and how they are perceived by the human senses? And who's to say whether or not they are intelligent entities (for lack of a better term) without proper investigation of them?

source:

• Scientists discover "shadow person"; Erica Harrison; COSMOS Magazine (cosmosmagazine.com); September 25, 2006