Estás en tu casa solo sentado en el sillón luego de un largo día de trabajo, mientras mirás una serie. De repente tenés la sensación de que alguien te observa. Tu cuerpo se tensa pero no podés explicar la experiencia. Incluso, ante la incomodidad, decidís moverte hacia otra dirección de la casa. Esa inquietud humana fue objeto de muchos estudios científicos. Tras diversos análisis, la ciencia logró dar respuesta sobre cómo y por qué el cerebro crea esa extraña sensación de compañía invisible.

En 1898, el psicólogo Edward Titchener se preguntó si la piel podía detectar la mirada ajena. Lo publicó en un artículo titulado “La sensación de ser observado”, según precisó Scientific American. Aunque la hipótesis original sostenía que los humanos sentían la mirada física de otros, Titchener sentó las bases para posteriores investigaciones. Su trabajo abrió el debate sobre la percepción sin una causa concreta: ¿podemos sentirnos vigilados incluso en soledad?

Investigadores bautizaron este fenómeno como scopaesthesia. Surge cuando creemos sentir una mirada sobre nosotros, a pesar de estar solos. Para muchas personas, la experiencia sugiere una fuerza inexplicable; otros piensan en paranoia. La ciencia intentó descifrar si realmente existe esa percepción, o si tan solo se trata de un error de nuestro cerebro.

La comunidad científica expresó dudas repetidas sobre la fiabilidad de los experimentos en el campo de lo inexplicable, debido a los obstáculos que presenta su validación en condiciones controladas. Sin embargo, algunas investigaciones, entre ellas las propuestas por Rupert Sheldrake, sugirieron que ciertas personas pueden percibir cuando alguien las observa, incluso sin contacto visual directo. De acuerdo con Sheldrake, la existencia de este fenómeno abre una brecha entre la experiencia espontánea y la capacidad de la ciencia para corroborar hechos vinculados a lo aparentemente paranormal.

Asimismo, un estudio publicado por la revista Current Biology, señaló que es nuestro cerebro el encargado de provocar esta sensación. Investigadores de la Escuela Politécnica Federal de Lausana (EPFL) identificó las partes del cerebro responsables de esta sensación. Además, los científicos desarrollaron un experimento en el cual algunas personas revelaron sentir la cercanía de un “fantasma”.

“La sensación es muy vívida. Sienten que hay alguien pero no pueden verlo. Siempre es como una presencia”, explicó Giulio Rogningi, del EPFL a BBC. De forma continua aseguró que “es muy común en aquellos que experimentan condiciones extremas, como los montañistas o los exploradores, y en las personas que padecen condiciones neurológicas”.

“Lo que resulta sorprendente es que generalmente dicen que la presencia replica los movimientos que ellos hacen o la posición en la que están en ese momento específico. Es decir, si el paciente está sentado, sienten que la presencia está sentada. Si están parados, la presencia está parada”, comentó Rogningi.

Para evaluar esta sensación, los investigadores realizaron un escáner cerebral a 12 personas con desórdenes neurológicos que habían experimentado en el pasado la sensación de estar al lado de un fantasma. Allí descubrieron que todos tenían alguna clase de daño en las partes del cerebro asociadas con la conciencia de uno mismo, el movimiento y la posición del cuerpo en el espacio.

En otras pruebas, según detalló BBC, los científicos usaron a 48 voluntarios sanos que no habían experimentado la sensación. Los mismos fueron sometidos a un experimento para alterar las señales neuronales en estas mismas regiones del cerebro. Primero les vendaron los ojos. Seguidamente les pidieron que manipularan un robot con sus manos.

A medida que lo hacían, un robot trazaba los movimientos exactos en la espalda de los voluntarios. Cuando los movimientos en la espalda y al frente de los voluntarios tuvieron lugar al mismo tiempo, los voluntarios no sintieron nada extraño. Pero cuando hubo demora entre ambos movimientos, un tercio de los participantes dijo sentir una presencia fantasmagórica en la habitación. Dos de los participantes, incluso, pidieron parar el experimento.

El equipo consideró que cuando la gente siente una presencia fantasmal, el cerebro se confunde. Así calcula mal la posición del cuerpo y lo identifica como si le perteneciese a otra persona. “Nuestro cerebro posee varias representaciones de nuestro cuerpo en el espacio”, explicó Rogningi. Y agregó: “En circunstancias normales, puede componer una percepción unificada del yo a partir de esas representaciones”.

“Pero, cuando este sistema funciona mal a causa de una enfermedad –o en este caso, por la acción de un robot– esto puede a veces crear una segunda representación del cuerpo de uno, que ya no percibe como ‘yo’ sino como otra persona, una ‘presencia’”. Los investigadores creen que el estudio puede ayudar a entender mejor las condiciones neurológicas como la esquizofrenia.

FIRST ON FOX: The Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Tuesday launched billboards outside three rural hospitals that Democrats say are closing or cutting back services due to President Donald Trump’s recently signed domestic policy package.

The DNC says it placed billboards in Silex, Missouri; Stillwell, Oklahoma; and Missoula, Montana, to make sure that rural voters, who overwhelmingly supported Trump in last year’s presidential election, «know who is responsible for gutting rural health care.»

The Democrats’ national party committee, in taking aim at the sweeping and controversial tax cut and spending measure, named the «One Big Beautiful Bill» by Trump and congressional Republicans, argued that «residents are already seeing the firsthand effects of Trump’s Budget Betrayal.»

The billboards were shared first with Fox News Digital on Tuesday morning.

RNC CHAIR SAYS ‘BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL’ KEY TO GOP’S MESSAGING EFFORT HEADED INTO MIDTERMS

The measure is stuffed full of Trump’s 2024 campaign trail promises and second-term priorities on tax cuts, immigration, defense, energy and the debt limit. 

It includes extending the president’s signature 2017 tax cuts and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay. 

By making his first-term tax rates permanent — they were set to expire later this year — the bill will cut taxes by nearly $4.4 trillion over the next decade, according to analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

POLITICAL FIGHT OVER ‘BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL’ IS FRONT-AND-CENTER IN KEY SENATE RACE

The measure also provides billions for border security and codifies the president’s controversial immigration crackdown.

The $3.4 trillion legislative package is also projected to surge the national debt by $4 trillion over the next decade, but many Republicans dispute the projection by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

And the new law also restructures Medicaid — the almost 60-year-old federal program that provides health coverage to roughly 71 million low-income Americans. The CBO this week estimated that 10 million people could lose their health insurance over the next decade.

President Trump celebrates signing the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ into law on July 4, 2025 — a sweeping policy package Democrats claim guts rural health care services. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

The changes to Medicaid, as well as cuts to food stamps, another one of the nation’s major safety net programs, were drafted in part as an offset to pay for extending Trump’s tax cuts. The measure includes a slew of new rules and regulations, including work requirements for many of those seeking Medicaid coverage.

Democrats, for months, have repeatedly blasted Republicans over the social safety net changes. And they spotlighted a slew of national polls last month and this month that indicate the bill’s popularity in negative territory.

WHAT’S ACTUALLY IN TRUMP’S ‘BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL’

The DNC claims that the bill, which Trump signed into law on July 4 after the GOP-controlled House and Senate narrowly passed the measure along near-party-line votes, will gut Medicaid, forcing rural hospitals and nursing homes to close their doors. 

«Rural hospitals were already on the brink of collapse thanks to Donald Trump, but now he has put the last nail in the coffin for rural hospitals with his billionaire budget bill,» DNC chair Ken Martin argued in a statement to Fox News.

DNC Chair Ken Martin is leading the charge against Trump’s domestic policy package, accusing Republicans of abandoning rural Americans by slashing Medicaid funding. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)

Martin highlighted that «in states across the country, hospitals are either closing their doors or cutting critical services, and it’s Trump’s own voters who will suffer the most. This is what Donald Trump does — screw over the people who are counting on him.»

Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Michael Whatley, in an interview with Fox News Digital last week, spotlighted that «if you take a look at the Medicaid side of this conversation, the fact is that we’re going to be moving illegal aliens off of Medicaid. We’re going to be strengthening the program. Those are things that absolutely need to happen.»

FIRST ON FOX: HOUSE REPUBLICANS LAUNCH FIRST ADS TOUTING ‘BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’

And he argued that «the tax cuts are going to be very, very strong indicators, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. Plus we’re extending those Trump tax cuts. This is going to help every family in every community all across the country.»

Included in the megabill is a $60 billion fund, named the Rural Health Transformation Program, which Republicans say would offset cuts to Medicaid and would also help overcome long-standing health disparities that rural communities have faced.

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But the DNC says their new analysis «shows this funding was never going to be enough to make a difference.»

And the DNC points to a non-partisan breakdown of the new law, which says that half of the rural hospital funding will be split evenly among all states that apply, regardless of need.

Both parties see the «big, beautiful bill» as a key part of their messaging heading into next year’s midterm elections, when the Republicans will be defending their slim majorities in the House and Senate.

The effects of both President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine on NATO have forced swift and potentially permanent changes in the alliance.

Following last month’s announcement that the majority of NATO’s 32 members had agreed to increase defense spending to hit 5% of each nation’s GDP, Trump drew headlines after he drastically changed his tone and declared the alliance was no longer a «rip-off.» But his previously tough stance saw undeniable results in how the security group operates. 

«Trump has changed the game,» Peter Doran, an expert on Russia, Ukraine, and transatlantic relations, and an adjunct senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said. «[Then] there’s Vladimir Putin, who has clearly awakened the Europeans to the danger that Russia presents to them.» 

Beginning in his first term, Trump made clear his resentment that only five NATO allies were meeting their 2% GDP defense spending pledges, and those criticisms rang loudly following his return to the campaign trail for the 2024 election amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.  

Questions ran rampant over whether Trump would not only continue to provide strong U.S. support for Ukraine, but whether Washington would remain a reliable ally for Europe when confronted with the reality of a war-ready Russia. 

RUSSIA SAYS NATO THREATENS WWIII IN LATEST DETERRENCE PLAN THAT COULD TAKE DOWN KALININGRAD ‘FASTER THAN EVER’

Though an increasing number of NATO nations began upping their defense spending commitments following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, several allies began pushing for changes before Trump even re-entered the White House.

Trump not only threatened to remove troops from Europe and divert them to positions in Asia, but he suggested he might not come to the defense of a NATO ally should they be attacked, infamously saying at a February 2024 campaign event, «You don’t pay your bills; you get no protection. It’s very simple.»

«I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want,» he said in regard to the threat of a Russian attack on a NATO nation.

But his tough rhetoric appeared to yield results. 

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte — who has shared a good relationship with Trump — jokingly referred to Trump’s geopolitical tendencies for unconventional statesmanship, particularly after he used the f-word in a fiery rant about a breakdown in the Iran-Israel ceasefire during last month’s summit when he said, «Daddy has to sometimes use strong language.»

President Donald Trump is greeted by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (right) and Netherland Prime Minister Dick Schoof (left) at the official welcoming ceremony for the 2025 NATO Summit at The Hague on June 25, 2025. (AP Images)

«Donald Trump’s a real contrast to Joe Biden,» Peter Rough, a senior fellow and the director of the Hudson Institute’s Center on Europe and Eurasia, told Fox News Digital. «Joe Biden, bear hugged the NATO allies to the point of smothering them with adoration, and that caused them, I think, to sit back and relax a little bit. 

«Donald Trump, by contrast, exposes the allies to just enough hostile power to encourage them to do more, but it doesn’t expose them so much that it might invite a Russian attack,» he added. «And I think that’s the art of the deal, so to speak.»

PUTIN MUM ON TRUMP’S 50-DAY ULTIMATUM, KREMLIN OFFICIALS CLAIM RUSSIA ‘DIDN’T CARE’

But while experts agree it is unlikely that NATO nations would have stepped up their spending on defense even more without the pressure Trump put on them, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s role in re-invigorating NATO cannot be ignored.

Participants of a high-intensity training session, seen at the end of the exercise at the Nowa Deba training ground on May 6, 2023 in Nowa Deba, Poland. (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

«If Vladimir Putin and the Russians in the post-Cold War period had sought to engage Europe and chosen more of a democratic future, there might not be a NATO Alliance today,» Rough said. «But Putin has given NATO a real reason to exist, and President Trump has done his part by… cajoling, pushing, nudging the allies.»

But not everyone is convinced that the changes NATO is undergoing are permanent. 

RUSSIA THREATENS WEST WITH ‘PREEMPTIVE STRIKES’ AS NATO LOOKS TO DELIVER PATRIOTS ‘AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE’

Mike Ryan, who formally served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy, told Fox News Digital he does not necessarily believe that the Trump and Putin presidencies have permanently changed the NATO alliance but said, «Both have energized and focused [the] allies.»

«But that’s what happens in NATO when confronted with an external crisis,» he added. 

Upon Trump’s re-election there was increased concern about how the U.S. would be perceived by its allies, whether it was still considered a trusted partner or if it was returning to isolationist tendencies not seen since the lead up to World War II.

US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet during the NATO Heads of State and Government Summit in The Hague, Netherlands on June 25, 2025.  (Getty Images)

«The answer is very clearly no,» Doran argued. «If anything, Trump came back and did exactly the same thing he did in the first administration, and that was to remind the Europeans that they are chronically under-spending on defense.

«If anything, Trump hasn’t changed at all. It’s the Europeans’ awareness that they need to spend more, and they have responded positively to that challenge, and that is very encouraging,» he added.

Though Rough cautioned there is a balance to be maintained when putting such high pressure on U.S. allies. 

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«Donald Trump’s created a lot of anxiety in Europe, and it’s important to convert that anxiety into policy wins,» he said. «If that anxiety is allowed to linger or is exacerbated or made worse, then one could see some European states push more for so-called strategic autonomy, or a separation from the U.S.

«But if that anxiety translates to… real policy victories and partnerships with Europe, then I think it can be a healthy thing,» Rough said.