Slashdot Mirror
Robot Makes People Feel Like a Ghost Is Nearby
sciencehabit writes: In 2006, cognitive neuroscientist Olaf Blanke of the University of Geneva in Switzerland was testing a patient's brain functions before her epilepsy surgery when he noticed something strange. Every time he electrically stimulated the region of her brain responsible for integrating different sensory signals from the body, the patient would look behind her back as if a person was there, even when she knew full well that no one was actually present. Now, with the help of robots, Blanke and colleagues have not only found a neurological explanation for this illusion, but also tricked healthy people into sensing "ghosts," they report online in Current Biology (abstract). The study could help explain why schizophrenia patients sometimes hallucinate that aliens control their movements.
What the article doesn't say is the effect is easily counteracted by the patient wearing a tin foil hat.
Don't leave home without it.
Dualists are still staggeringly common.
Why are so many people so adamant about the notion that consciousness can't come from the physical brain?
... if it weren't for you meddling kids!!
Sock Puppets: damn_registrars=pudge_confirmer=jimmy_slimmy=raiigunner=cml4524=a_klavan=red4men=ronpaulisanidiot
Exactly this, I'm not sure what "ghosts" have to do with this. If I make someone think there's someone behind them, they'll think there's someone behind them.
This doesn't make much sense to me. First off, the test subject knows something else is behind them touching their back. They know there IS a "ghost" there (IE something external from themselves) that is touching their back. The test subject knows from experience that even though they are moving their hand, that motion on their back can't be because their hand is actually back there.
When the touches are synchronized, and the motion they make with their finger results in the robot touching their back at the same time, the brain coordinates the events and automatically realizes "I just triggered this touch on my back by doing something" and they don't have that sense that something external is behind them.
When the touch is delayed, the brain does not automatically correlate their action with the sensation on their back, and thus the robot's motions are interpreted as something external (ie a "ghost").
What doesn't make sense to me is the synchronized motion part is really the trick here - that our brain will automatically figure out we're causing a sensation, even though the mechanics don't make sense or it's something we haven't experienced before. The fact that that or subconscious does not automatically assimilate those motions that are no longer synchronized is to be expected. There IS a ghost behind the person touching them, in the form of a robot, and if the actions are not synchronized, then our mind may not correlate those delayed motions as a result of something we did.
As soon as those motions are no longer synchronized it gets silly to make the test subject guess how many people are behind them or whatever. Something is poking them in the back, and they don't notice that it's a delayed result of their own motions - it's quite obvious that a robot or person or something is responsible for that sensation. And so different people will make different guesses about what kind of trickery is going on behind their back based on their mental state or perception or whatever.
Or maybe something about this experiment went WOOSH right over my head.
Better known as 318230.
Just because your brain is tickled, that does not mean there's no ghost behind you.
Your friend may be sensitive to infrasound. There's a decent entry on wikipedia under "infrasound" that may enlighten.
Ever notice that Cobra Commander sounds an awful lot like Star scream?
I wonder if this also explains why some people believe in an invisible sky daddy
The test subjects operated a robot arm with their finger. sometimes it would move in sync with them and poke them in the back. then they felt like they were poking themselves in the back. understandable. sometimes it was delayed. Then they felt like someone else was poking them in the back.
How is that a breakdown of your self cohesion processing? Something you aren't really controlling is just poking you in the back! Sure, you gave the input, but i expect your cohesion times out after a couple milliseconds. we couldn't function if we were trying to attribute every sensation we receive for 5 seconds after doing something as part of our actions.
I'm sure we've all had the experience of being poked in the back by a tree branch. Your brain forms a convincing description that someone is there until you turn around and see it's just a branch. that sounds more like what is being demonstrated here.
i didn't see any mention of a control where people were just randomly poked in the back.
Hope for some form of afterlife.
It usually boils down to those two.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I have faith that physicists have done their work well,
That's thrust and confidence.
You trust scientists that they know and understand the field of their research based on the fact that they have invested decades of work and study and calculation and experimentation in reaching the conclusions they've reached.
You'd have no such trust in similar claims coming from a guy who came around to fix your boiler.
He starts talking about his calculation and experiments proving worm holes exist and you start backing away. Right?
Nor would you have any trust in claims made by a scientist from another field.
E.g. A microbiologist coming up with a theory on how there are more than 700 different flavors of electrons.
You'd go "OK, got any proof of that? No?"
And in the off chance that the said microbiologist would reply that they've used LHC (or similar equipment) to prove it - would that automatically satisfy you? Or would you continue asking questions?
Like "How EXACTLY did you use it? They have microbiology department at CERN? Did you get to meet Brian Cox? What does he say? Are things really gonna get better?"
Because you have trust and confidence in the PROCEDURE of how someone gets to CERN to smash protons together.
But my mother that attends church feels the same way about her pastor.
Nope.
She'd buy the story about how he saw Jesus while in a coma from both the boiler guy and the microbiologist. Or the pastor.
Cause she has faith in the IDEA of Jesus and afterlife - NOT in the qualifications of pastors, microbiologists or plumbers.
Had they said "I was in a coma and a purple panda-bird came to me and said I will be a tasty ornament of a fridge god called Joe and fed me ice cream that tasted like color blue." she would probably not believe them.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I can't believe discussion on this topic turned into a heated debate on consciousness and metaphysics, ignoring the explosive impact this research will have on the sex toy industry, especially for the fellas.
No longer will man have to rely on his imagination to put life into the can of Pillsbury biscuit dough he's humping (or the silicon equivalent of the same technology). With the new Thrust Delaying harness your Canned Tang, Handee Man, Li'l Tugger, and Bone Cone can take on a spooky life of it's own! Dial up the delay and you'll think Patrick Swayze was giving you a reach-around via Woopie Goldberg! That's some stranger danger you can feel safe about!
Why stop there? Hook it up to an amp so you can control the volume and tone of your thrusts and plug in some effect pedals to play with the peak and trough of your strokes!
Truly a great landmark day in the history of onanism. Hopefully this will herald growth and innovation (like cotton in a cotton gin) instead of isolating pain and humiliation (like a penis in a cotton gin).
I applaud Blanke for conducting this research and perhaps it will generate quantitative data that will eventually help epileptics and schizophrenics, but I'm not clear why any of this would be surprising. If you are in a building where there are low frequency sounds, that you can perceive subconsciously but cannot hear consciously, you may get a feeling that it is haunted. If you see a light in the sky moving so slowly that your brain interprets it as simultaneously stationary and moving, you may feel that you are seeing a UFO. The "region of her brain responsible for integrating different sensory signals" should be the logical place to associate with feelings of the paranormal.
Correlation is not causation.
How can we be sure that Blanke's original electrical stimulation discovery in 2006 and the later the robot poking experiments didn't actually summon malevolent entities that then caused the spooky sensation (at a distance?) the participants experienced?
On a more serious note, I'd like to see some follow-up interviews with the participants to rate how they felt after the experiment. Subjectively, did they feel like they had more "creepy" experiences following the experiment? I'd like to know if the people felt "creeped out" more than usual after the experiment. Of course you'd need a control group who always had the pokes in sync and never "sensed" the "ghost".
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
Makes me wonder what those people see... Nothing good, i hope :-)