Have you ever had your phone vibrate, reached deep in your pocket, pulled it out and then realized there was never a call in the first place?

If this is all too common, don’t be alarmed – it happens to millions of people and it’s called Phantom Vibration Syndrome, also known as “Vibranxiety.”

Phantom Vibration Syndrome, or PVS, has been the subject matter for countless recent blogs, and has recently been studied by experts. It is unknown what causes PVS.

“I have no idea why it happens, but it happens three or four times a week,” said Austin Thomas, sophomore in aerospace engineering.

Some believe they are just anticipatory vibrations caused by the expectation of an important incoming call.

“Maybe you want someone to call you,” Thomas said. “You feel it move when you walk and mistake it as a vibration.”

People tend to set filters in the brain to detect rings and vibrations under noisy conditions and they become part of the body’s perceptual learning process. Random sensations trip the filter and are interpreted as a real signal when they are truly just false alarms.

“Neurological connections that have been used or formed by the sensation of vibrating are easily activated,” said Jeffrey Janata, director of the behavioral medicine program at University Hospitals in Cleveland, in USA Today article. “They’re over-solidified, and similar sensations are incorporated into that template. They became a habit of the brain.”

It seems PVS is directly linked to the brain’s neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to form new connections in response to changes in the environment.

“It is plastic to the extent that you can raise and lower your threshold for a certain sensation,” said Eric Cooper, associate professor of psychology. “They lower their threshold for that vibration, and then they do not need quite as much input for the neurons to fire and cross that threshold.”

Random firing may cause someone to go react if their threshold is low enough, Cooper said.

“If you were anticipating an important call, you could be more hyper-sensitive,” he said.

Cell phone company spokesmen have said they are not aware of any consumer complaints about phantom vibrations. In the USA Today article, Mark Siegel of AT&T said there are no cell phones that can sporadically vibrate on their own.

“Perhaps [it is] in the mind of the cell phone user only,” he said.

Maybe “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams explained it best on his blog, www.dilbert.org. He writes that he gets phantom vibrations “about 10 times per day,” and thinks “Ooh, it’s an e-mail with good news!’ So far, the only good news is that my pocket is vibrating, and that’s OK because it gives me hope that the condition might spread to the rest of my pants.”