Research suggests 'ghosts' could be all in the mind..

Oneiros wrote: No. The idea that 90% of our brain (or its potential) goes unused and can be activated or something like that is ridiculous. There is almost no part of our brain that can take even minor damage without measurable consequences which means that every part of the brain has an active function. The brain typically requires anywhere from 15-20% of our bodies' energy at any given time. If we're only utilizing 10% of it or 10% of its potential, why would it require so much energy?

There have been studies at Johns Hopkins where peoples' brain functions were monitored all day and every part of the brain was used at some point or another. Obviously not every region is firing concurrently though. That would have a similar outcome to daisy chaining surge protectors.

We do, in fact, use 100% of our brains. Some people have greater intellectual potential than others but it's still 100% of that person's potential.

Again, you're asserting that because every region of the brain is active, we're using 100% of our brain. In terms of geometry, I agree with you completely. There are no hidden reserves of brainpower that can be mapped to any location on the brain, because the entire thing is used, more or less, very consistently.

However, to say that we use 100% of our brain in terms of its potential is a stance that discounts one of the organs we know (relatively) little about. It's akin to saying that a certain glass is 100% utilized because, at different parts of the day, the entire interior surface area was touched by water at least once. It claims a stance that would seem to preclude people moving from one range of intellect to another (which is more than possible), or that we know everything there is to know about the limits of the human mind. Which we don't. We don't know everything there is to know about anything, broadly speaking.

I'm not saying we only use 10% of the physical locations and geometric area of our brains. I'm saying we know little enough about how the brain functions that we could still find ways to overclock them.

In regards to the OP, it's entirely possible that, given the right stimuli and environment, a researcher could produce in any of their test subject whatever kind of reaction they wanted. Finding a way to make people see ghosts doesn't mean that ghosts are all in our minds. If someone sees a ghost under non-lab conditions and we can monitor them and show that A, B, and C happened just before they saw the ghost and then reverse reproduce that in a lab, then I'd say yes, that proves that ghosts are in our minds. But simply alligning everything correctly to make someone think they're seeing ghosts doesn't mean anything.

steamboat28 wrote: Again, you're asserting that because every region of the brain is active, we're using 100% of our brain.

No I'm not. That's why I added the "potential" caveat in there.

steamboat28 wrote: However, to say that we use 100% of our brain in terms of its potential is a stance that discounts one of the organs we know (relatively) little about.

I'm not sure how that discounts the brain, but we do actually know quite a bit about how the brain works.

steamboat28 wrote: It claims a stance that would seem to preclude people moving from one range of intellect to another (which is more than possible), or that we know everything there is to know about the limits of the human mind. Which we don't. We don't know everything there is to know about anything, broadly speaking.

Not at all. It claims no stance of the kind. Studies show that our brains are actually no more advanced than early Cro-Magnons'. In fact, our brains are getting smaller. Now, that doesn't mean we're getting less intelligent. It actually points to social progress, but that's an entirely different discussion. Since our brains are essentially the same as Cro-Magnon's, and even though we're more "advanced" than they were, it means that we have no greater potential than they did. They learned all they could for their lives with the time they had and we do the same. You learned about tectonic plates in school but they didn't, but conversely they learned the patterns of deer herds for their entire region for each season and you didn't. Just because tectonic plates are a more "advanced" concept doesn't mean we're using more of our potential to understand it than Cro-Magnon did to track deer. We could teach those same deer tracking Cro-Magnons to use a smart phone. It doesn't require more potential and it doesn't mean we're using more of our potential than they were, just a different focus.

And pictures say a 1000 words....

*sigh* You know I was excited about this. Then I saw the photo. The mind rationalizes, what is going on around it. If you discomboblulate the body, something touching you somewhere on your back might become something touching closer to your shoulder, or even your shoulder. Your mind rationalizes that something is touching you, your situational awareness goes out the window consciously, and your conscious mind tries to make sense of it. In the moment, sure you might fabricate ghostly figures- because you can't see anything corporeal around you.

All this proves, is that you are not always experiencing what you think you are experiencing.

Now, if the experiment had discombobulated the subject without touching them (such as experiments that prove you can get "bad feelings" when something vibrates at 7-19Hz [ http://http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2013/06/ghost-of-the-machine-sounds-in-the-paranormal/ ] ) then I think this experiment would hold a lot more merit.