There’s a Hidden ‘Shadow Person’ in Your Brain
February 5, 2007 by Liz Lewis
Filed under Philosophy, Your Mind
The ability to perceive a Hidden Shadow Person resides within us all:
[A] paper, published in the British journal Nature, describes the case of a 22-year-old woman with no history of psychiatric problems who was being evaluated for treatment of epilepsy. When a region of her brain called the left temporoparietal junction was electrically stimulated, the woman described encounters with a ‘shadow person’ who mimicked her bodily movements.
“Electrical stimulation repeatedly produced a feeling of the presence of another person in her 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 was lying down, stimulation of this brain region caused her to feel that someone was behind her. She described the person as young, of indeterminate sex, “a shadow who did not speak or move, and whose position beneath her back was identical to her own”, according to the researchers…
…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.
Full Article – Cosmos Magazine
This woman is not crazy. In fact she’s just like you and me. Stimulating the same part of our brains would also allow us to “sense” our “shadow self.” This may go a long way in explaining out of body experiences and other persistent paranormal phenomena with no explanation. See? It’s all in your head(s).
