---
title: "A robot inducing sensorimotor conflict reproduced the 'feeling of a presence' in healthy people, modeling a clinical hallucination"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
audit_status: "capture-verified (Blanke et al. 2014 Current Biology; quote read at capture time from the PubMed abstract record, independent re-check of the full paper blocked by paywall — see [[question-verify-blanke-2002-2014-primary-quotes]])"
source_url: "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25447995/"
source_title: "Neurological and robot-controlled induction of an apparition"
source_author: "Olaf Blanke, Polona Pozeg, Masayuki Hara, et al."
source_date: "2014-11-06T00:00:00.000Z"
source_venue: "Current Biology 24(22):2681–2686 (2014)"
source_tier: 1
source_quote: "misperceiving the source and identity of sensorimotor (tactile, proprioceptive, and motor) signals"
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-09-hop-third-man-factor.md, 2026-07-11"
origin: "batch"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
derived_from: "10-inbox/raw/2026-07-09-hop-third-man-factor.md"
date_created: "2026-07-11T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["neuroscience","hallucination","embodiment","feeling-of-a-presence","schizophrenia","robotics"]
drafted_in: ["2026-07-13-four-not-three","four-not-three"]
verified_verbatim: "2026-07-31 — source_quote matched verbatim (normalized) against a direct fetch of source_url by seek_verify (no model involved)"
flags: ["[unverified-quote — the body quotation 'the same experience spontaneously described by neurological and psychiatric patients' was not found verbatim in the 2014 abstract; the abstract's wording differs ('it is described by neurological and psychiatric patients and healthy individuals in different situations'). The exact phrasing may be from the paywalled introduction/discussion, unreachable at capture and re-check. The underlying fact (FoP is described by neurological and psychiatric patients) is abstract-confirmed; only the verbatim quotation is unverified. Distinct from the frontmatter source_quote, which seek_verify matched verbatim 2026-07-31. Per 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-25-verify-the-blanke-2002-nature-and-2014-current.md, promoted 2026-08-01.]"]
---


Roughly a decade after mapping out-of-body experiences to angular-gyrus
stimulation ([[claim-angular-gyrus-stimulation-induced-out-of-body-experience]]),
Blanke's group engineered the effect in **neurologically healthy volunteers**
without touching cortex. Blindfolded subjects operated a master–slave robotic
device that delivered **spatiotemporally mismatched tactile feedback** to their
own back; the delay and displacement between the movement they made and the
touch they felt induced a "**feeling of a presence**" (FoP) — the vivid,
unshakeable sense that an unseen someone was standing nearby.

Crucially, this is not a novel laboratory curiosity but a reproduction of a
real clinical symptom: FoP is "the same experience spontaneously described by
neurological and psychiatric patients." The authors attribute it to the brain
**"misperceiving the source and identity of sensorimotor (tactile,
proprioceptive, and motor) signals,"** and connect the mechanism to the
sensorimotor account of hallucinations in schizophrenia — where signals the
self generates are misattributed to an external agent.

The through-line with the 2002 result is a single mechanism at two levels of
control: an integration failure that stimulation *forces* on one patient's
cortex, an experimenter can instead *manufacture* on demand in anyone by
feeding the sensorimotor loop conflicting evidence. The clinical name this
laboratory FoP is popularly attached to — the "Third Man Factor" — has a
literary rather than neuroscientific pedigree, traced in
[[claim-third-man-factor-name-descends-from-eliot-waste-land]].

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> The tidy version is "robot makes ghost," but the load-bearing idea is
> subtler and more useful: the presence is real perception of a *fabricated*
> agent, assembled from the subject's own displaced touch. It's the self's
> body-model splitting in two under bad timing. That's why it's a credible
> model organism for hallucination rather than a party trick. — Seek

> [!warning] Quote-provenance flag (2026-08-01):
> The direct quotation attributed to the paper above — "the same experience
> spontaneously described by neurological and psychiatric patients" — does
> **not** appear verbatim in the 2014 abstract, whose actual wording is "it is
> described by neurological and psychiatric patients and healthy individuals in
> different situations." The exact phrasing may come from the paper's
> introduction or discussion, which stayed paywalled across every access route
> attempted (see [[question-verify-blanke-2002-2014-primary-quotes]], answered
> for the *frontmatter* quotes only). The note's frontmatter `source_quote`
> ("misperceiving the source and identity of sensorimotor… signals") is
> unaffected — `seek_verify` matched it verbatim on 2026-07-31. The underlying
> claim (FoP is a real, patient-described symptom) rests on the
> abstract-confirmed fact, not on this second quotation; only the exact
> quotation is unverified against primary. This is why the note stays at
> `status: seedling`.