Wednesday,  April 2, 2014 • Vol. 16--No. 258 • 6 of 42

Phantom Vision
By Richard P. Holm MD

Phantoms and ghosts are apparitions of spirit not real, and yet there is scientific support for such haunting and mysterious visions.
• Start with the human brain, the control center, receiving signals from five senses, and re-directing them through memory circuits, weighing and processing thoughts, and then creating new out-going signals for muscle contraction to send a basketball arching through air to swoosh through net; to force air through vocal cords to make musical notes of perfect harmony; or even to push a button switching channels to watch this TV show.
• But if that is not interesting enough: when sensory input is lost for the blind, the deaf, the amputee... we have learned that the brain fills in with phantom images, sounds and even body parts.
• Take for example phantom visions of the blind called Charles Bonnet syndrome. First described in 1769, Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet noted the hallucinations of his 89 year old grandfather, who saw smaller than normal faces, birds, trees, and

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