Some time around February 2025, after experiencing a handful of tremors at home in my Taipei apartment (tremors, mind you, that locals wouldn’t blink an eye at), I began feeling quakes that weren’t there – especially when still, in bed, at night.
Lying on my side, I would feel movement. What could easily be chalked up to neurodivergent hypervigilance seemed less to do with anxiety or “fight or flight,” and instead just felt odd.
I then noticed it happened more often when lying on my left side – and realized my heartbeat was most likely to blame.
Could my brain have been mixing up typical internal signals to frame a previous “external” signal?
For many like myself, the feeling of tilting and shaking doesn’t stop once the tremor of an earthquake has passed. In a new cross-sectional study, researchers at Istanbul Medipol University in Türkiye set out to explain the neuroscience behind these phantom earthquake sensations.
Their investigation explored potential links between the aftermath of non-destructive ground shaking and “phantom perception, spatial context, earthquake-related anxiety (EAS), and post-traumatic stress (IES-R).”
“A growing body of research highlights that these after-effects include a spectrum of illusory experiences, most notably ‘phantom earthquake sensations (PES)’ – a persistent feeling of swaying in the absence of measurable seismic activity,” the researchers note.
PES is an umbrella term that includes the sensation known as post-earthquake dizziness syndrome (PEDS), a condition defined by Japanese researchers in 2014.
“These sensations are distinct from aftershock-induced disequilibrium,” the researchers note. “They can persist for days or weeks and are often accompanied by significant distress, hypervigilance, and behavioral changes. This phenomenon suggests that earthquake perception is not merely a response to external ground motion but a complex, multisensory, and context-dependent process modulated by psychological and neurophysiological factors that shape bodily awareness and risk appraisal.”
Studying PES, however, has proven challenging. Apart from environmental factors – including earthquake frequency, size, type – people’s highly personal life experiences, trauma processing, and brain chemistry set an extremely difficult puzzle for scientists.
For their research, audiologists Kerem Ersin and Şeyma Tuğba Öztürk recruited 157 adults (81 females, 76 males; aged 18–65 years) who had experienced the 6.2-magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of Silivri in the Sea of Marmara, near Istanbul, around lunchtime on April 23, 2025. This was a non-destructive quake with no major damage inflicted.
The pair hoped that, unlike earlier studies, using a more “minor” seismic event would rule out confounders such as grief, injury, loss of property, and other trauma linked to more catastrophic quakes.
Within four weeks of the 2025 earthquake, the 157 participants underwent an extensive interview that covered both the event – where they were and what they were doing, how strong they perceived it to be, whether they experienced dizziness within 24 hours following it – and whether they continued to feel shaking afterward.
The researchers then asked those who reported a physiological response how often they experienced these “phantom” earthquakes, when and how often they occurred, and how often they were checking online media. They also measured tremor-specific anxiety via the EAS and post-traumatic stress with the IES-R, which separates symptoms into intrusion, avoidance, and hyperarousal categories.
While participants were evenly split on how they perceived the quake (mild, moderate, severe, or didn’t feel it), their IES-R scores aligned with responses typical of those experienced soon after an unexpected event.
However, individuals’ locations at the time of the quake had a meaningful impact on PES, as varied as they are. People who felt the earthquake at home, especially if they were alone at the time, had significantly higher EAS and IES-R scores compared with those who were at work.
This at-home cohort was also more likely to experience frequent and prolonged phantom earthquakes.
Among those who had been at home, 48.7% reported PES several times a day, compared with 13.3% of people who’d been at work. And the symptoms persisted; 41% of the home cohort continued to experience phantom tremors for days, compared with 6.7% of those at work at the time.
The authors are quick to note that this doesn’t reflect poorly on the home environment. Instead, they believe it may have more to do with it being where someone is most likely still and hyper-aware of their body’s response in the aftermath of such an unexpected event.
And those at home who reported that the quake felt mild still experienced enduring PES – along with higher anxiety scores.
“The uncertainty of whether a ‘very mild’ sensation was an earthquake, a structural issue, or an aftershock may create cognitive threat ambiguity that generates more anxiety than a clearly defined, severe event,” the researchers write. “This ambiguity could lead to a constant re-evaluation of one’s environment and bodily sensations (hypervigilance), thereby increasing anxiety.”
What’s more, being home alone at the time also appeared to amplify perceptions of the event.
In busy environments, there is no shortage of external sensations that help people process the odd experience of the ground shaking beneath them. At home, you don’t have as much information to rely on.
In quiet spaces, cues on whether the ground is shaking are distorted by our expectations.
“The perception of seismic accelerations in the vestibular organs … lays the groundwork for misbinding small internal signals as ‘I am still swaying’,” the researchers state.
“Moreover, clusters of balance disturbances cannot be explained solely by ‘mechanical aftershocks’; sensory conflict, changes in living conditions, and autonomic stress make meaningful contributions to the persistence of phantom sensations in the post-event period.”
Essentially, through a series of pathways and signals, the brain determines whether you’re moving by continuously processing information. But the nature of a quake – the unpredictable and sudden movement around you – presents the brain with an unusual sensory puzzle.
Being stationary indoors doesn’t appear to cause PES. But the scientists think that this state may leave your brain without the other sensory reference points needed to categorize movement. This sensory ambiguity could prime your brain for certainty, making it feel like another quake is occurring even in the absence of seismic activity.
While the research unearths new factors that appear to influence phantom quake sensations, the study has its limitations. Some of those of note include that the study was self-report-focused, without any vestibular analysis that could offer key clues as to where PES may be mechanistically based.
The results are observational, not causal, and because of the wide range of responses – not to mention the vast environmental and individual variables noted earlier – the study presents more questions than answers.
Studying brain functions after an unpredictable real-world event such as an earthquake is an obvious challenge. But the use of movement-tracking accelerometers could help researchers quantify instances of PES.
These new findings open the door to future avenues of investigation, including studies involving populations that experience frequent, small earthquakes such as those felt in Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan, and adults with neurodivergence or mental health conditions where sensory messaging can be dysregulated.
While phantom quakes are a bizarre experience, they’re not dangerous, and for most people who experience PES after an earthquake, they fade over time.
And, having experienced a fair percentage of the estimated 75 tremors that have shaken Taipei in the last year, I certainly prefer the imaginary ones compared with the real deal.
Source: Frontiers in Public Health
