From the Torygraph, apologies if this has been posted before:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai...cighost121.xmlScientists "see" ghosts
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 7:01pm GMT 21/02/2008
The reason that apparitions, bogeymen and phantoms like to lurk in the shadows may have been revealed by scientists. A team from University College London finds that when we gaze around in a poorly-lit context, it can fool our brains into seeing things that are not really there.
Although no one has done a systematic study of ghosts*, neuroscientists are convinced they are "all in the mind" and, in the light of the new work, it does not seem so surprising that they seem most often glimpsed in "spooky" dimly-lit circumstances In the journal PLoS Computational Biology, Prof Li Zhaoping and her colleagues say that the context surrounding what we see is all important - sometimes overriding the evidence gathered by our eyes and even causing us to imagine things. They were surprised to find that a vague background context has more influence on what we see than one that is bright and well defined, and speculate that this might explain the power of some abstract art and why we can see vivid details in the vague brush strokes of impressionist paintings.
"The paintings are vague in details, but I speculate that, perhaps because of this vagueness viewers are free to use their vivid imaginations to fill-in the details," says Prof Zhaoping, who adopts her first name as her scientific pen name - Li is such a common name it can cause an identity crisis for Chinese scientists.
"Everything we see is an hallucination generated by the virtual reality machine inside our head," comments Prof Mike Morgan of The City University, London. "Normally these hallucinations are vetoed by the information coming through our senses, so we can call perception 'controlled hallucination.But when the input is ambiguous we can see all sorts of things, like the faces de Quincy saw in clouds and carpets. There are hundreds of faces hidden in the textured floors of the platforms at Euston Underground Station, if you look for them."
To reveal the haunting power of context, 18 observers were asked by the UCL team to concentrate on the centre of a black computer screen. Every time a buzzer sounded they pressed one of two buttons to record whether or not they had just seen a small, dim, grey 'target' rectangle in the middle of the screen. It did not appear every time, but when it did appear it was displayed for just 80 milliseconds (80 one thousandths of a second).
"People saw the target much more often if it appeared in the middle of a vertical line of similar looking, grey rectangles, compared to when it appeared in the middle of a pattern of bright, white rectangles. They even registered 'seeing' the target when it wasn't actually there," says Prof Zhaoping. "This is because people are mentally better prepared to see something vague when the surrounding context is also vague. It made sense for them to see it - so that's what happened. When the target didn't match the expectations set by the surrounding context, they saw it much less often.
"Illusionists have been alive to this phenomenon for years,"continues Prof Zhaoping. "When you see them throw a ball into the air, followed by a second ball, and then a third ball which 'magically' disappears, you wonder how they did it. In truth, there's often no third ball - it's just our brain being deceived by the context, telling us that we really did see three balls launched into the air, one after the other. Contrary to what one might expect, it is a vague rather than a bright and clearly visible context that most strongly permits our beliefs to override the evidence and fill in the blanks."
This could also be why monsters tend to lurk in shadows. "In shadows many things are seen vaguely (rather than clearly), thus tending to trigger the filling-in," says Prof Zhaoping.
Last edited by dalriada; 7th March 2008 at 05:35 PM. Reason: * Gurney, Myers, Podmore & Sidgwick spin in their graves...
Wonder what Dr B makes of this?
It's interesting stuff - but nothing new. We have a strange situation at the moment with a lot of para-scientists nicking stuff from mainstream cognitive science and just re-doing it with the paranormal or even mainstream people using the paranomral to make their research look more 'funky'.
It is important to do - but not that new or insightful (more deductive than inductive in the sense it confirms what we already know). Like I said, I think it should be done - but in the context of everything that has gone before.....8) Anticipatory biases and contexutal effects on perception have been investigated for decades and are well documented. Anyone here remember the flea circus?
I wonder if they used an SDT (signal detection theory paradigm) to tease out sensitivity and response bias? I am sure they did though I have yet to read the primary article.
Last edited by Dr B; 10th March 2008 at 07:35 AM.
Not much to disagree with there but I do think the analogy of using one's imagination to fill in the details of paintings is somewhat misleading.
When we see, or rather perceive, a 'spook', the process of converting an ambiguous stimulus into a perception is an automatic process rather than an active one; similar in manner to how we perceive optical illusions.
.
I totally agree with the autonomy of the process John.
Dr B, do you not feel that paranormal investigators who use scientific methods to determine if there is indeed any paranormal phenomena, and publish good solid results, are in someway still silly because of what they seek in the first place?
I must admit I would have thought the scientific community would at least give a nod in the direction of the groups who act like this. It saves the scientists a whole bunch of headaches reexplaining what has been explained to be natural before.
It's 'not Dr B' here! What sort of results are we talking about here? Is it people trying to use scientific methods to demonstrate the paranormal or natural explanations? In my experience, groups who attempt to demonstrate the paranormal scientifically rarely understand either science, instruments or logic. They seem to think if you take a few readings it somehow makes it scientific.Originally Posted by bobdezon
Like I said, good scientific results. Evidence to explain why the phenomena isnt paranormal, based on actual scientific replicable facts, like the maligned orb theory. Im not advocating that groups who use scientific equipment are in any way scientific. Measuring enviromental readings with devices made to measure such, does not make anyones findings "scientific". Lets face facts here, if we discount anecdotal evidence, and stress or mental illness reasons, medication or susbstance abuse, or missattributation of phenomena, there is ZERO evidence of the paranormal. If a paranormal group claims to have evidence of such then they better have some solid scientific proof to back that claim. I have yet to see a single shred of evidence provided by any paranormal group that proves that any aspect of the paranormal is real.
In that case, no I definitely DON'T think groups are silly to use scientific methods to invesigate the paranormal. Can't speak for DrB, of course ...!
While the existence of the paranormal is debatable, that people continue to report similar phenomena year after year is not. It is certainly, in my opinion, something worthy of scientific investigation. Even if there is no obvious evidence of the paranormal, there is certainly evidence of something!
I personally believe much if not all of it is the result of primative instinct, possibly a variation of a survival instinct, and possibly cognative processes that are misunderstood by the person experiencing it. Imagination does seem to play a large part in the retelling of the tale.
With respect, I'm not interested in what anyone believes about the paranormal. I want to KNOW, which is why I believe science is the way forward.
The most recent edition of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research Vol 72.1 Number 890 January 2008 just dropped in my mailbox today.
Exhibit A is an article by some bloke from Birmingham entitled "Putting Magnetism in its Place: A Critical Examination of the Weak-Itensity Magnetic Field Account for Anomalous Haunt-type Experiences" pp 34- 50. The paper discusses the neuromagnetic field theory, assesses its biophysical plausibility and its limitations, concluding that although the magnetic field account has much to commend it, it is neither uncontroversial nor comprehensive in its current form.
The paper has four-and-a-bit pages worth of references...
Exhibit B is on the following pages 51-57, a research note entitled "An Acoustic Research InfraSound Detector (ARID). It is pointed out that both that name and the associated abbreviation are copyright of the authors Parsons & O'Keefe (2006) who declare an "underlying purpose of making infrasound research accessible to paranormal investigators". The article is a "technical description of a highly efficient reference instrument, a workable infrasound detection and measurement system."*
Eight references are also given in support.
Last edited by dalriada; 11th March 2008 at 05:23 PM. Reason: * which every ghosthunting group in the country will want to rush out and buy now- depending on price...
Oh..and just in case it is actually possible to copyright single words, I want first dibs on wankers and bollocks...
They're my favourites...
So, Dalriada, are you agreeing with my point or disputing it? I'm really not sure ...
Agreeing that there are indeed two ways of looking at hauntings:
A) science, logic, reasoning
and
B) taking a few readings...*
Last edited by dalriada; 11th March 2008 at 05:53 PM. Reason: *...plus seeing the thing as an opportunity for self-promotion and financial gain
In my opinion, for what it's worth, I think far more ghosts are explained by misperception than electromagnetic fields or infrasound. I always thought it extremely unlikely that someone could turn a mundanely caused shadow into a ghostly figure, complete with full details of non-existent 'limbs' and 'clothing', until I saw it happen!
When someone tells me they've seen a ghost, and describe it in huge detail, I'm not as impressed as I used to be.
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