There is a considerable body of evidence that "top-down" processes affect not only how sensory evidence is processed, but how the sensations themselves are expe

There is a considerable body of evidence that "top-down" processes affect not only how sensory evidence is processed, but how the sensations themselves are experienced. In other words, high-level (but subconscious) neural "judgments" about the statistics of the world, actually influence how you perceive it. To put it still another way: sensations aren't simply passively experienced; they are actively constructed by the brain. Phantom phone vibration is, in many ways, just as "constructed" as real phone vibration. Perceptual illusions provide one of the clearest ways to show that sensations reflect factors other than external stimuli. Here are two illusions, in different sensory modalities, that demonstrate the strong top-down influence of the brain on perception: The rubber hand illusion [1,2] and the McGurk effect [3,4]. The rubber hand illusion is particularly relevant because it is quite similar to the phantom phone vibration effect. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_hand_illusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_hand_illusion 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCQbygjG0RU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCQbygjG0RU 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect 4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0 EDIT: Here's an additional example to consider. People generally can't tickle themselves. The sensations are less strong when one touches oneself than when someone else does so. The explanation for this is that the brain automatically discounts sensations which arise as a result of self-motion. This has obvious advantages, namely that you don't constantly overstimulate yourself just in the process of moving through the world and are as such better able to attend to important externally generated stimuli.