Scientists "see" Ghosts [View All]

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/02/21/scighost121.xml

"The reason that apparitions, bogeymen and phantoms like to lurk in the shadows may have been revealed by scientists.

A team from University College London finds that when we gaze around in a poorly-lit context, it can fool our brains into seeing things that are not really there.

Although no one has done a systematic study of ghosts, neuroscientists are convinced they are "all in the mind" and, in the light of the new work, it does not seem so surprising that they seem most often glimpsed in "spooky" dimly-lit circumstances

In the journal PLoS Computational Biology, Prof Li Zhaoping and her colleagues say that the context surrounding what we see is all important - sometimes overriding the evidence gathered by our eyes and even causing us to imagine things.

They were surprised to find that a vague background context has more influence on what we see than one that is bright and well defined, and speculate that this might explain the power of some abstract art and why we can see vivid details in the vague brush strokes of impressionist paintings."