Ever had the feeling you鈥檙e being followed? Neuroscientists have accidentally induced this creepy feeling in a woman with epilepsy while electrically stimulating the left side of her brain.
The woman described how a shadowy man clasped her in his arms when she hugged her knees, and tried to pull cards out of her hands as she read them (Nature, vol 443, p 287). Olaf Blanke at the University Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland, and his colleagues realised that the 鈥渕an鈥� was in fact mimicking her own actions.
They believe the stimulated area, which is known to process information about where our body is, may be affected in psychiatric patients who suffer feelings of paranoia, persecution and alien control.
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