From the March 2003 Scientific American Magazine | 2 comments

Demon-Haunted Brain ( Preview )

If the brain mediates all experience, then paranormal phenomena are nothing more than neuronal events

By Michael Shermer

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March
2003 Issue
Recommended The Neurologist and the Philosopher
Innovations The Relentless Storm
Voyages Follies and Foucault's Pendulum
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Five centuries ago demons haunted our world, with incubi and succubi tormenting victims as they lay asleep. Two centuries ago spirits haunted our world, with ghosts and ghouls harassing sufferers during all hours of the night. This past century aliens haunted our world, with grays and greens abducting captives and whisking them away for probing and prodding. Nowadays people are reporting out-of-body experiences, floating above their beds.What is going on here? Are these elusive creatures and mysterious phenomena in our world or in our minds? New evidence adds weight to the notion that they are, in fact, products of the brain. Neuroscientist Michael Persinger, in his laboratory at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, for example, can induce all these perceptions in subjects by subjecting their temporal lobes to patterns of magnetic fields. (I tried it myself and had a mild out-of-body experience.)

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