A 2014 Swiss Experiment: Creating an 'Extra Person' Behind You

Many people have spoken of a feeling: even though there is no one else in the room, they feel as if someone is standing behind them.

In 2014, a research group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne conducted an experiment that used a machine to recreate this sensation.

The experiment worked like this: participants were blindfolded, standing in front of a machine, holding a rod in their hands and pushing it back and forth. The rod was connected to another machine behind them; each push caused the machine behind to gently poke their back.

If the touch on the rod and the touch on the back were synchronous—that is, pushing the hand forward while being poked on the back at the same time—participants felt as if they were touching their own backs, with nothing unusual.

But if the touch on the back was delayed by half a second compared to the hand's movement, things changed. Many people began to say: “It feels like there is someone behind me.” Some felt that standing behind them was not one person, but two or three. Some asked to stop before finishing because they felt too uncomfortable.

The researchers' explanation is that the brain distinguishes “me” from “others” by predicting the consequences of its own actions. When you want to raise your hand, your brain has already calculated what the hand will touch. When the prediction does not match the actual sensation, the brain judges: this action was not done by me, but by someone else. And this “someone else” just happens to be behind you.

They later looked at some patients who had this experience: some people, due to injury to certain parts of the brain, often feel that there is someone beside them—invisible, but very clear. Examinations found that the damaged areas in these patients were exactly the regions that govern the sense of body position.

This can also explain some very old things: mountaineers and people rowing alone, when physically and mentally exhausted, often feel that there is an extra person in their group. This “extra person” may be the brain making a final judgment for you.

#Paranormal #网络转载 #科学解释