Brief Communications
Nature 443, 287 (21 September 2006) | doi:10.1038/443287a; Received 19 July 2006; Accepted 25 August 2006; Published online 20 September 2006
Induction of an illusory shadow person
Shahar Arzy1,3, Margitta Seeck2,3, Stephanie Ortigue3,4, Laurent Spinelli2 and Olaf Blanke1,3
Stimulation of a site on the brain's left hemisphere prompts the creepy feeling that somebody is close by.
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, but it is not understood how the illusion is triggered by the brain1, 2. Here we describe the repeated induction of this sensation in a patient who was undergoing presurgical evaluation for epilepsy treatment, as a result of focal electrical stimulation of the left temporoparietal junction: the illusory person closely 'shadowed' changes in the patient's body position and posture. These perceptions may have been due to a disturbance in the multisensory processing of body and self at the temporoparietal junction.
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne 1015, Switzerland
- Presurgical Epilepsy Evaluation Unit, University Hospital, Geneva 1211, Switzerland
- Department of Neurology, University Hospital, Geneva 1211, Switzerland
- Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Dartmouth College, Dartmouth, New Hampshire 03755, USA
Correspondence to: Olaf Blanke1,3 Email: olaf.blanke@epfl.ch
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