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【medical-news】照亮心中的阴影－－恐惧的内心体
You're walking down an empty street alone, when suddenly, you have the eerie feeling that someone's following you. Is your mind playing tricks on you? Maybe so. According to a new study, when a specific region of the brain called the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is stimulated, it can create the illusion of a "shadow person." Given that such experiences are often heightened in psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and paranoia--and even in those who believe they've been abducted by aliens--the results could lead to a better understanding of these neurological conditions.
The finding emerged by accident. Neurologist Olaf Blanke of the Brain Mind Institute in Lausanne, Switzerland, and his colleagues, were attempting to identify the source of epileptic seizures in a 23-year-old woman. They applied a mild current through surgically implanted electrodes to various regions of her brain. Not much happened until the researchers stimulated the woman's left TPJ, located roughly above the left ear. Suddenly, she reported feeling the presence of a mystery person behind her, a motionless and speechless shadow that imitated her body posture and actions. "He" lay beneath her when she lay down, sat behind her when she sat down, and attempted to take a test card from her when she tried to participate in a language exercise.
Such delusions are similar to those seen in patients with schizophrenia, says Blanke. Schizophrenics often mistake their own bodies to be someone else's, for example, and attribute their own actions to others. They also have frequent illusions of being followed, or controlled by a stranger, as do those who claim to have been manipulated by aliens.
Blanke says the shadow person phenomenon may shed light on how the brain perceives "self." In order to recognize its own body, he says, the brain uses sensory information, such as visual and proprioceptive cues (which indicate the position of body parts relative to each other and everything else). The TPJ is known to put some of these cues together. When this function is disrupted, the brain perceives two bodies instead of one and mistakes the second for that of a stranger, the researchers propose tomorrow in Nature.
It's a valid idea, says neurologist Pawan Sinha of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. But this might be just one of many mechanisms that generate such hallucinations, he says.
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Watch your back.
Stimulating the TPJ region of the brain (yellow arrow, top) caused a woman to think there was someone behind her when she sat down (bottom).
screen.width-333)this.width=screen.width-333" width=190 height=255 title="Click to view full 200692041.jpg (190 X 255)" border=0 align=absmiddle> 认领了 照亮心中的阴影
你正在一个空巷中独自一人行走，突然，你产生了恐怖感，好像有人跟踪你。是你的思想在捉弄你吗？可能就是这样的。根据一项新的研究，当大脑的一个特殊区域即左侧颞顶交界区（TBJ）被刺激，可能会产生人影的错觉。假如这种感觉经常加强就会产生精神系统紊乱如精神分裂症和妄想狂，甚至有的人会认为他们被外星人劫持。这些结论可能使我们对这些神经学上的结论更好的理解。
这是一个偶然发现。瑞士洛桑脑精神研究所的神经学家Olaf Blanke和他的同事试图在一个23岁妇女身上鉴定癫痫发作源。他们通过外科运用了一种意识电流在她的大脑中植入电极。研究者刺激位于左侧耳朵上的TPJ之前什么也没有发生。突然，她感到在她的身后有个神秘的人出现了，是一个不活动的不说话的影子模仿她的体位和动作。当她躺下，他就躺在她的下面，当她坐下，他就坐在她的后面，当她开始一个语言训练时，他也试图得到一个测试卡。
这种错觉和精神分裂症病人相似，Blanke说。精神分裂症经常错认为他们自己的身体是别人的，例如，把他们自己的特点误认为是别人的。他们也频繁的有被跟踪的错觉，或者被陌生人控制，正如那些生成自己被外星人控制的人那样。Llanke说，阴影现象可能为大脑感知自身照亮明灯。为了认知自身，大脑需要感觉信号如视觉和本体感觉。TPJ可以把浙西综合到一起。当这个功能被破坏，大脑就认为自己的身体被第二个或者一个陌生人替代。研究者的建议将会于明天发表于Nature上。这是一个有根据的想法，波士顿马塞诸塞州技术研究院神经学家Pawan说，但是，产生这种错觉可能需要一种或者多种机制。 对这篇文章比较感兴趣，但有些地方我理解的不同，还请指教！
Illuminating the Shadow People
照亮暗藏的人影
Given that such experiences are often heightened in psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and paranoia--and even in those who believe they've been abducted by aliens--the results could lead to a better understanding of these neurological conditions.
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作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2010-12-27 05:14
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