{"id":186537,"date":"2024-04-01T06:24:01","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T11:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/ghostly-presences-scientists-shed-light-on-the-unseen-forces-shaping-our-social-reality"},"modified":"2024-04-01T06:24:01","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T11:24:01","slug":"ghostly-presences-scientists-shed-light-on-the-unseen-forces-shaping-our-social-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/ghostly-presences-scientists-shed-light-on-the-unseen-forces-shaping-our-social-reality","title":{"rendered":"Ghostly Presences: Scientists Shed Light on the Unseen Forces Shaping Our Social Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ghostly-presences-scientists-shed-light-on-the-unseen-forces-shaping-our-social-reality2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you had to estimate the number of people in a room, without counting them one-by-one, by nature you would overcount them. That\u2019s because, simply put from a Darwinian perspective of how we have evolved, it\u2019s better to overcount potentially harmful agents and predators than to underestimate them.<\/p>\n<p>This <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/2153599X.2018.1453529\">overcounting social behaviour is<\/a> shown to be true in humans as well as animals. It\u2019s certainly better to detect too many tigers (even if absent) during a jungle excursion than to miss a hungry one!<\/p>\n<p>Now, EPFL neuroscientists show that if you experience hallucinations, especially when related to an illness like Parkinson\u2019s disease, then you will overestimate the number of people in a room to a greater degree. They also show that if you have hallucinations but are asked to estimate the number of <em>boxes<\/em> in a room, which are inanimate control objects, then no extra over-estimation occurs, shedding light on the social nature of this overcounting. The results are published in <em> <i>Nature Communications<\/i><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you had to estimate the number of people in a room, without counting them one-by-one, by nature you would overcount them. That\u2019s because, simply put from a Darwinian perspective of how we have evolved, it\u2019s better to overcount potentially harmful agents and predators than to underestimate them. This overcounting social behaviour is shown to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}