媒体英语会带大家一起学习 BBC 撰稿人在报道世界大事时常用到的单词和短语。

Feeling spooked? It's just your brain

鬼是不存在的。当一个人觉得身边有鬼的时候那都是大脑在捉弄你。这是科学家对大脑研究后得出的结论。他们已经成功鉴别出大脑中用来处理每个人周围空间的部分。这一研究报告发表在《当代生物学》杂志上。以下是 BBC 记者 Rebecca Morelle 发来的报道:

The feeling of a ghostly presence – that spooky sensation that someone is close-by when no-one is there - has often been reported by mountaineers, explorers and many others. But according to this study, the mystery lies in the parts of the brain that help us perceive our body’s position in space.

When scientists interfered with signals in these neural regions, blindfolded volunteers reported sensing up to four ghosts in the room.

The team believes the brain is getting confused, miscalculating the body’s position and identifying it as belonging to someone else.