Arzy Experiment: Ghosts Are In Our Heads

The Arzy experiment has sought to prove something that few have dared to do in the past. For a long time, we have considered as paranormal everything that is related to a change in our perceptual capacity, such as seeing shadows or feeling someone’s presence. But thanks to a new method of brain research, we can now study most of these things through science glasses.

Everyone must have experienced at least once in their lives the feeling that someone is watching them. While you’ve probably suspected your senses, it doesn’t make you “crazy”. This is because the brain is such a complex sensory organ that any changes can lead to perceptual errors.

The Arzy experiment

Shahar Arzy is a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. His research has proven that hallucination stages as well as areas of the brain associated with multisensory unification include a physiological perspective.

How was the experiment done?

In his experiment, Arzy managed to create a feeling in the subject that there was another shadow in the room. He did it with central electrical stimulation.

Arzy made an experiment at a site that didn’t have any mental health problems before. He stimulates the CRS of the subject in the brain. Each time Arzy stimulated that area, the subject began to feel as if there was a shadow behind him.

Variations

Arzy repeated the experiment with the subject in different positions, but the shadow was always in the same place relative to the subject. That would suggest that the shadow is just a reflection of our own body.

This would likely be due to a change in a multisensory or sensorimotor process as a result of CRS stimulation. What is interesting is that we previously combined CRS with self-processing and the distinction we made between ourselves and others.

The role of the CRS

The CRS is the part of the brain where the temporal lobe and the main lobe block meet. The main block has a strong relationship to somatosensory and motor mapping of the body.

The temporal block involves language processing and makes connections with the subcortical area for mental processing to occur. But the intersection between these two brain blocks, the CRS, is not just multisensory alignment. It is also related to a self-processing cognitive perspective.

CRS and extracorporeal experiences

The Arzy experiment focused on the strong activation of that area of ​​the brain as it processes things like:

• Your own mental image
• Visual-spatial perspective and placement
• The distinction made between oneself and others
• Balancing body and multi-sensor unification

When Arzy stimulated the CRS in this experiment, the subject did not experience shadow as a reflection of himself. He felt it as an outside presence. This phenomenon is due to the role of the temporal lobe in the linguistic sense.

Feeling that someone else is present

The first question you ask yourself after reading about the Arzy experiment is probably: how could we not be aware of such a great dissociation? Should we be? The experiment suggests that such feelings seem to outsiders. The theory is that “knowing ourselves” in our brains is extremely sensitive.

Thus, any structural, electrical or functional change can lead to observational errors. In other words, knowing ourselves or being able to distinguish between perceiving our own body and everything else is not as stable as we previously thought.

The role of the almond nucleus

The tonsil nucleus is a subcortical structure that is part of the limbic system of the brain. This neural structure is a thorough part of the processing of the spiritual side of experiences.

Any change caused by stimulation of the CRS feels foreign to the brain and therefore the immediate reaction is fear. You are not used to the feeling where you feel your body is outside of yourself. For that reason, the almond nucleus gives a negative mental reaction, but it can often end up exacerbating hallucinations.

What kind of experiences can this blurring of the senses cause?

Experiences can be very varied. From a clinical point of view, the general experience is “extracorporeal experiences”. The most common are:

• Feeling floating
• Looking at the body from the outside
• Feeling an external presence
• Extremely clear thoughts and dreams

Are these experiences signs of mental illness?

As Arzy shows in his experiment, these dissociation experiences are just as likely to happen in people who don’t have any mental health problems.

But there are some diseases or conditions that people who suffer from or experience experience unusual things due to changes in the brain. These include:

• Sleep paralysis.  They are associated with hypnagogic as well as hypnopumpic hallucinations. In sleep paralysis, a person wakes up before he controls his body. He tries to move but is unable to because of a muscle paralysis. As a result, brain motion perception changes.
• Epilepsy and severe migraines. Electrical brain changes can cause similar effects that Arzy described in his experiment.

• Neurodegenerative diseases. Hallucinations are very common with them. Deterioration of nerve tissue leads to sensory unification problems. In most cases, older people who experience this associate an external presence with a dear friend or family member.

But there are also cases where sensory processing can be lost for other reasons, such as:

• Excessive stress
• About the sleep deficit
• Lack of senses

The brain is fascinating!

The Arzy experiment will surprise even the most skeptical readers of all. Our ability to recognize our own bodies is so much more complex and sensitive than we think.

But that’s not all. Part of the problem is also that we’ve considered these things “paranormal” for a long time. But now science proves that this is not always the case.

Seeing a shadow while walking or thinking a mannequin is human are similar to small hallucinations. They are small observational errors that say nothing about mental health. But a better understanding of them can also help us better understand ourselves.