You may have already felt that there was someone in the same room as you, but there is no one, this sense of presence, of feeling that something or someone is close to you, is a phenomenon that happens more often than we think, and yet it is scary.
This phenomenon is lived as something very real, people feel that there is someone very close, even if they cannot see it, they feel that they are not alone, even if there is no one around them, besides, they cannot clearly identify anyone. stimulus that produces this feeling, such as a voice, music or any other similar signal.
- Researchers are trying to explain this phenomenon in a rational and scientific way.
- For this they created an experience in which some people might feel this presence.
- Scientists recruited 48 healthy volunteers who had never experienced this sense of presence to alter certain neural signals in certain regions of their brain.
Blindfolded, volunteers had to handle a robot with their hands and at the same time another robot made the same moves behind them, the result is that when movements occur at the same time, individuals feel nothing extraordinary.
However, when the movements of the robot and volunteers did not occur at the same time, a third of them reported feeling the presence of a ghost in the room, some volunteers were so frightened that they asked to remove the blindfold and finish the experiment.
The same team of researchers performed a brain scan of 12 people with neurological disorders who had already felt this sensation of presence, with the aim of determining which part of the brain was associated with this phenomenon and experience confirmed that the parties involved were those associated with self-awareness, movement and position of the body in space.
The results of previous surveys clarify that the robot’s movements temporarily alter brain function in the aforementioned regions, when people feel the presence of a ghost what actually happens is that the brain is confused, mis-calculates the position of the body and identifies it as belonging to another person.
When the brain has a neurological abnormality, or when stimulated by a robot, it can create a second representation of the body itself, which is perceived by the person as a strange presence, this presence performs the same movements as them and maintains the same position.
“The human mind functions as a whole, and it is not the senses, but the individual, who perceives reality. “J. L. Pinillos?
The psychopathology of imagination and perception is a central theme of psychopathological research; in fact, psychological research has led us to a number of explanatory theories about perception and imagination, however, these theories differ in several respects.
Illusion is a clear example that perception is not determined “objectively”. Perception is not only influenced by the physical characteristics of the stimulus we perceive. In the process of perception of something, the body reacts to stimuli based on its previous predispositions, expectations. experiences.
“Somehow, we can anticipate the information provided by the context. “Amparo Belloch?
All this leads us to affirm that our perceptual treatment is guided not only by the data presented, but also by our ideas, judgments and concepts, for example, if a person believes in ghosts, when he feels a sense of presence, he will really do so. they think there’s a ghost on their side.
But how do we know if certain events actually happen? As Helmohltz pointed out more than a century ago, the human eye has three receptors, each more sensitive to a wavelength, representing the primary colors: blue, red and green. is exposed to a certain wave frequency, each receptor reacts to an intensity and the brain interprets it as a mixture of primary colors, resulting in the secondary color seen by the observer. These sensations belong to our nervous system, not to the object itself.
Therefore, the strange thing is that we perceive objects “outside” when processing, which is our immediate experience, occurs “inside”. However, other kinds of experiences, such as dreams, imagination or thought, live them “inside”.
It is important to remember that in the act of perceiving something, judgment and interpretation interfere, this means that perceptual inaccuracies, errors or errors of the senses are as normal as otherwise, at least in terms of probability (Slade and Bentall, 1988). .
Perception and imagination disorders are generally classified into two groups: distortions and perception errors (Hamilton, 1985, Sims, 1988). Distortions of perception are only possible through the participation of the senses. These distortions occur when a stimulus that exists outside of us is perceived differently than you would expect.
In addition, in many cases, organic disorders cause distortions of perception, which are generally transient and can affect both the reception of facts by the senses and the interpretation that our brain performs.
In the case of perception errors there is a new experience of perception that is not based on existing stimuli outside the person (as in hallucinations), in addition this perceptual experience usually coexists with the rest of “normal” perceptions and can remain despite the stimulus that produced the initial perception is no longer physically present.
So how do you classify this sense of presence? As we have said above, the feeling of presence could be framed by perceptual distortions, within the perceptual distortions we can do the following classification:
In fact, according to the researchers and the above classification, this seems to be the case. An illusion is a perceptual distortion in terms of misperception of a particular object. Everyday life offers several examples of illusory experiences.
How many times do we think we see a friend when we wait at the movie door, who has never heard footsteps in a dark, lonely alley, or who has never felt the presence of someone (ghost or not) when in reality there was no one else in the room?
If you’ve ever felt this feeling of presence, don’t worry Do you feel the presence of?Doesn’t that mean you’re going crazy. This can occur in certain life situations, such as physical fatigue or extreme loneliness.
However, feelings of presence associated with pathological anxiety and fear, schizophrenia, hysteria and organic mental disorders may also occur, in this case we recommend that you look for a specialist to assess your problem in detail.