Ever seen a ghost? Blame glitches in your brain, say team of Chinese neurologists citing Pinna illusion tests
Researchers find brain still has ‘bugs’ despite millions of years of evolution
Partial brain failure is the most likely cause of ghost sightings, according to a new study by Chinese neurologists.
Assuming the majority of these are optical illusions rather than visions of the walking dead, a team led by Professor Wang Wei at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences found that most such sightings occur when the brain misinterprets signals sent from the eyes.
Images appear in the brain after a huge number of photons are collected by millions of receptors in the retina. These are then converted into electrical signals, compressed and sent along nerve fibres to the brain’s visual cortex.
Previous studies have shown that when tiny pieces of information get lost along the way, it can contribute to the occurrence of optical illusions.
The team had over a dozen volunteers look at an image known as the Pinna illusion (explained in the caption above). It was created in the 1990s by Dr Baingio Pinna, a visual scientist and artist from Italy.
