arXiv: “Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) uses a rapidly changing magnetic field that is powerful enough to induce currents in neurons in the brain. Focus the field in the visual cortex and the induced eddys cause the subject to ‘see’ lights that appear as discs and lines. Move the the field within the cortex and the subject sees the lights move too.

“But if this happens in the lab, then why not in the real world too, say Joseph Peer and Alexander Kendl at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. They calculate that the rapidly changing fields associated with repeated lightning strikes are powerful enough to cause a similar phenomenon in humans within 200 metres.

“So what would this kind of lightning-induced transcranial stimulation look like to anybody unlucky enough to experience it? Peer and Kendl say it may well look like the type of hallucinations induced by lab-based tests, in other words luminous lines and balls that appear to float in space in front of the subject’s eyes.

“It turns out, of course, that there are numerous reports of these types of observations during thunder storms. ‘An observer reporting this experience is likely to classify the event under the preconcepted term of ‘ball lightning’,’ say Kendl and Peer.”

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1005.1153: Transcranial Stimulability Of Phosphenes By Long Lightning Electromagnetic Pulses

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