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Orgo-Life the new way to the future Advertising by AdpathwayThis seems like a ripe topic for neuroscience research
Could it be that there's a class of brain-chemistry related hallucinations that amplify the illusory contours effect?
There's been a lot of work on visual perception and hallucinations in general, of course, but as Edward Current points out, it's hard to put someone in an MRI scanner while they're having a UFO "experience".
But we can compare people who believe in such phenomena with people who don't:
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Riekki recently asked sceptics and believers to view simple animations of moving shapes, while lying in a brain scanner. He found paranormal believers were more likely to see some kind of intention behind the movements – as if the shapes were playing a game of "tag", say – and this was reflected in greater brain activity in the regions normally associated with "theory of mind" and understanding others' motives. Riekki has also found that people who believe in the supernatural are more likely to see hidden faces in everyday photos – a finding confirmed by another team at the University of Amsterdam, who showed that paranormal believers are more likely to imagine that they had seen a walking figure in random light displays.
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Added to this, Riekki has found that believers may have weaker cognitive "inhibition", compared to sceptics. That's the skill that allows you to quash unwanted thoughts, so perhaps we are all spooked by strange coincidences and patterns from time to time, but sceptics are better at pushing them aside. Riekki gives the example of someone who is thinking about their mother, only for her to call two minutes later. "Is it just that sceptics can laugh and say it is just coincidence, and then think of something else?" he wonders. Significantly, another paper reported that paranormal believers also tend to have greater confidence in their decisions, even when they are based on ambiguous information.
BBC Future, "Psychology: The truth about the paranormal", David Robson, 31/10/2014
here https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20141030-the-truth-about-the-paranormal
It's quite a light but interesting read IMHO.
The abstract and introduction of the University of Amsterdam study- seeing if there was a difference between believers and sceptics in the perception of a walking human figure in a pattern of moving dots- can be seen here, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810013000974
"Paranormal believers are more prone to illusory agency detection than skeptics", Michiel van Elk,
Consciousness and Cognition Vol. 22, 3, September 2013.
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...paranormal beliefs (i.e. Psi, spiritualism, precognition, superstition) were strongly related to illusory agency detection.
van Elk writes,
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From an evolutionary point of view, incorrectly assuming the presence of another agent while there is none (i.e. a false positive) is associated with only little costs, whereas the false belief that no other agent is present while in fact there is one (i.e. a false negative) can cost one's life. Accordingly, it has been suggested that evolution has favored the selection of a hyper-active agency detection device (HADD) and that our perceptual systems are biased towards detecting the presence of patterns and other agents, such as animals or humans in the environment (Barrett, 2000).
[For "...other agents such as animals or humans..." we might include UFOs or aliens, or poltergeists, whatever, as other agents.]
The quote above parallels the quote in Mike West's post,
an observer must amidst urgent uncertainty quickly pick out from existing memories what threat or opportunity the perceived object offers so that fast response can be useful, even life-critical. False-positives are usually low-cost, so they are a preferred when-in- doubt strategy. At least, the genetic predisposition to this trait seems to survive to reproduce more offspring much more often over generations.
(although I feel both quotes perhaps underplay the costs of false positives, e.g. fleeing a non-existent predator expends energy and could incur injury, or might draw the attention of a real predator you haven't seen).
Again, van Elk:
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It was found that paranormal believers had a lower perceptual sensitivity than skeptics, which was due to a response bias to 'yes' for stimuli in which no agent was present.
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(BBC Future, link as above).
This is the paper referred to, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810014000907,
"Exploring the perceptual biases associated with believing and disbelieving in paranormal phenomena",
Christine Simmonds-Moore, Consciousness and Cognition vol. 28 August 2014 (not all the paper is accessible for free).
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Although believers and disbelievers did not differ in the number of guesses that they made (we all see things that are not there) believers display a greater tendency to exhibit other Type I behaviors, having more confidence in their guesses across study conditions and making more misidentifications
I think this is interesting- Type 1 errors are errors in experimental science that result, or might result, in the experimental hypothesis being accepted when it should be rejected.
(The experimental hypothesis is the relationship that the researcher is testing, e.g. "there is a positive correlation between wearing Lynx bodyspray and a successful first date").
The attribution of "Type 1 behaviors" to believers implies that they are more likely to see a relationship between one thing and another, even if that relationship doesn't in fact exist, and/or (as stated in the text) believers are more likely to have confidence in their conclusion about what they've seen, even if mistaken.
I think the latter might be a frequent (but not universal) trait in UFO witnesses.
In "Is it just a brick wall or a sign from the universe? An fMRI study of supernatural believers and skeptics", full paper here
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3831561/, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 8, 8, December 2013,
Marjaana Lindeman et al. say
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...we hypothesize that when asked to imagine that they are about to experience critical life situations and then shown pictures of lifeless objects and scenery, supernatural believers will report seeing signs in the pictures more frequently than will skeptics.
-and their investigation, conducted while the subjects were in an fMRI scanner (one at a time, not all at once!) found this to be so. It also allowed the researchers to identify the brain regions involved, and enabled comparison between believers and sceptics:
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Viewing the pictures activated the same brain regions among all participants (e.g. the left inferior frontal gyrus, IFG). However, the right IFG, previously associated with cognitive inhibition, was activated more strongly in skeptics than in supernatural believers, and its activation was negatively correlated to sign seeing in both participant groups.
Remember the study by Riekki, described in the BBC Future article?
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(Link above).
Maybe Lindeman et al. have identified the neuroanatomical structures responsible for Riekki's finding.
(A bit off-topic, but I have some scepticism about claims made for some fMRI neurocognitive studies, nothing regarding any of the above, but there have been mutterings about poor replicability of some research using fMRI. Whatever the truth of this is,
fMRI is obviously a vastly powerful diagnostic and investigative tool in the clinical setting).
It should be noted that this study (and others above, IIRC) recruited people who believe in psychic phenomena, ghosts, astrology etc. etc. as the "believer" cohort.
For scientific rigor, we should replicate these studies with, specifically, UFO believers and sceptics. 
IIRC there is a positive relationship between belief in UFOs and belief in other paranormal phenomenon- if I wasn't getting tired I'd look for supporting evidence, maybe tomorrow. However, there might be significant differences between UFO believers, as a group, and believers in other paranormal phenomena, as a group, even if there's a large overlap.
I think we should all remember that, despite our relative genetic homogeneity, there is tremendous human variation.
There won't be a clear-cut, dependable physiological predictor of belief, scepticism or credulousness at the individual level.
Do enough trials and we will find some sceptics who are prone to seeing connections where none exists, and some believers who don't. There will be believers whose right inferior frontal gyri activate as strongly as that of any sceptic, and sceptics whose right IFG appears to be taking a siesta. All will be equally likely to be healthy, decent human beings.
As a bit of a postscript, Metabunker Edward Current rightly says it's difficult to get a UFO believer into an MRI while they're seeing a UFO, but there have been instances of people being observed while apparently seeing a UFO, and even undergoing an "abduction".
If I remember correctly, Jim Schnabel's "Dark White: Aliens, Abductions and the UFO Obsession" (Hamish Hamilton, 1994) includes a brief account of a woman (in Australia?) undergoing an alien abduction experience- while her startled friends watched on, seeing nothing out of the ordinary except her strange behaviour.
-Can't remember if there was an explanation, someone borrowed my copy years ago. Probably a bit dated now, but a good read.
Book review from The Independent (UK newspaper), John Torode 15 March 1994,
"Little grey persons from fruitcakeland: 'Dark White: Aliens, abductions, and the UFO obsession" link here.
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