The Role of Dopamine in Parkinson's Disorder

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There's just a range of at least nations that can occur in Parkinson's often people don't realize. They tend to get grouped with something called passage hallucinations which is the vague sense of somebody going by out of the corner of your eye. But there's evidence that these two things together affect potentially as many as 50% of people with Parkinson's. And if you have them then you're also more likely to get more complex visual hallucinations say further down the line as well. It's an emerging field people are kind of studying this more and more, trying to work out the brain networks that are involved in when people have these presence experiences.

Shermer and Alderson-Day discuss the psychologist’s journey to understand the phenomenon of sensed-presence: the disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. Using contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and philosophy, Alderson-Day attempts to understand how this experience is possible. Is it a hallucination, a change in the brain, or something else? The journey to understand takes us to meet explorers, mediums, and robots, and step through real, imagined, and virtual worlds.

Ben Alderson-Day is an Associate Professor in Psychology and a Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University. A specialist in atypical cognition and mental health, his work spans cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and child development. His new book is Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other.