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Sensations of a non-existent person nearby might arise from the brain's failure to integrate different body signals. Olaf Blanke of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne

and his colleagues found that people who reported these feelings often had injuries in the frontoparietal cortex, which integrates different types of sensory and motor information. The team

recreated this effect in healthy volunteers who were asked to move a robot in front of them using their finger. A second robot behind them mimicked the movements by touching their back. The

participants were blindfolded and wore headphones so that they could not see or hear the robots moving. When the rear robot moved immediately, most participants felt that they were touching

themselves on the back with their own finger, even though their arms were stretched forward. But when there was a half-second delay, they felt that the touch was coming from someone, or

something, else. The illusions were caused by a mismatch between the expected and actual sensory information, the authors say. _Curr. Biol._ http://doi.org/wzb (2014) RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS

Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Ghostly feelings from brain mix-up. _Nature_ 515, 167 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/515167d Download citation * Published: 12

November 2014 * Issue Date: 13 November 2014 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/515167d SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Get

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