THERE’s nothing supernatural about ghosts, doppelgängers and out-of-body
experiences, says a Swiss neuroscientist. They are simply phantom sensations
like a phantom limb, he says, but spread to the whole body.
People experience phantom limbs—the sense that an amputated limb is
still present—when the part of the brain that normally senses the limb
loses those signals
(Â鶹´«Ă˝, 17 June, p 27).
Peter Brugger of
the University Hospital in Zurich says that doppelgängers, in which people
are aware of phantom “doubles” of themselves, have a similar origin.
Some people actually see their double, often as a…
