How easy is it to hallucinate reality? Let's find out how this works!

Hallucinations are sensations of some kind: visual, auditory, or any of the other 5 senses, that appear real but are not elicited or brought about by anything in our external environment. No external stimulus is being received, yet we think something is there.

Hallucination is not illusion (a misrepresentation or distortion of something real), delusion (correct stimulus and perception but additional absurd significance or meaning attributed), dreams (unconscious image processing as an unreality), or imagery/imagination (conscious image manipulation as an unreality).

Hallucination experiences are authentically happening in the brain, which is where the activity takes place to give us our false senses of an unreality. This makes it hard to distinguish from reality, because the brain is giving us these signals that are being altered from some substance, illness, or other factor.

Researchers at King's College London did brain scans of people having visual hallucinations. Whether hallucinating an image, or viewing a real version of the image, the same areas of the brain are activated. Hallucinations don't respond the same way as imagination in the brain, because they act more like perceptions. They are falsely induced perceptions through electro-chemical alterations within the body. The brains signals are being manipulated so that the images are perceived to be coming from real sensory stimulus, rather than simple imagination from within consciousness.

Throughout all of human history, we see indications at how some people can be confused by reality and senses about reality, vs. hallucinated senses about things that aren't there. People who said they had "holy" or "divine" visions or revelations, could indeed be true, in the sense that they had hallucinated induced visions or heard the voice of the "gods". A theory called the bicameral mind by Julian Jaynes suggests man once possibly thought of the evolutionary development of an internal voice/monologue as "gods".

Hallucinatory experiences can happen at any age and health, but the likelihood increase from the age of 60 onwards. 5% of us will have one or more hallucinations in our life.

When we are falling asleep, we can hallucinate sounds or shapes. Those who experience the loss of a loved one in extreme grief can also hallucinate their beloved.

Losing our senses can also induce hallucinatory experiences.

Those who start to lose their sight, often start to see things that aren't there, like full figured and colored people in high detail that their vision can't allow. A loss of hearing can also create sounds that aren't there, like notes, or full songs. Someone who experiences the loss of smell from Parkinson's disease suddenly began smelling burning leaves, to burnt wood and bad onions, to the point of making their eyes water.

Reverse Hallucination

Even partial loss of senses can result in hallucinations, like being exhausted.

Senses can be reduced, such as sensory deprivation. When one sense dials down, others can be amplified. When vision or hearing is reduced the brain fills in the gaps to keep the world running according to our expectations. For touch however, it's always getting some form of input, from the chair, to the floor, there is always some sense pressure being applied to our bodies.

To cope with the frequent signals, the brain filters signals for attention. Touches less than 250ms are dismissed. Constant touch eventually fades from attention. Most of us don't notice our socks, our pants, the food on our faces, or some pressure applied somewhere after some times. We feel nothing, even though there is sense there. This is a "reverse hallucination".

Hyperactivity

It appears those with schizophrenia can't do this reversal. After most people are inured to the vibrations of a bracelet, most schizophrenics will still notice it long after everyone else doesn't. Schizophrenia seems to be more a sensory disorder than impaired cognition. This sensory hyperactivity also links to this research on hallucinations, since schizophrenics are known to sometimes see things as well.

Hyperawareness seems to be going on in people who hallucinate feeling insects on them. Our brains fill in the gaps with stories we make up to try to explain what we feel, experience or think. Many of these people have taken an over the counter stimulant which sends their brains into this activity level. The brain ultimately decides what we feel, see or hear around us, whether it's there or not. A properly regulated bio-electro-chemical system is important to stay in touch with reality.

The brain doesn't seem to tolerate inactivity for long. A reduction in sensory input sometimes results in the brain creating some of its own. High flying aviators and truck drivers in long trips have reported hallucinations. Conversely, we are normally stimulated with thousands of sensations every second to provide a constant frame of reference for consciousness. We don't notice many things that are applying pressure on our bodies unless we focus on it. There is noise all around us but we normalize it out. To always pay attention to everything would be an inefficient use of the brain.

Fortune Tellers

The way sound works, is for lower regions to process basics like pattern and pitch. This gets passed as s signal to higher brain processing regions for melody and key changes. Once we hear something, the brain has a pattern of it in memory. When we hear it again, the brain recognizes the pattern, and expects the rest to come after.

A quick verification is made with reality to confirm the prediction is maintained. This way heavy processing is saved. If the reality check fails, then we process the signal to higher areas instead of making the usual prediction, and correct how we will process the pattern in the future.

This is how we recognize music after only hearing a few notes, or a movie from only seeing a few frames.

In someone going fully deaf, they can only hear a bit. The higher regions of the brain aren't being reached to fully process the audio. One study by Newcastle University showed how a deaf woman had a quieting of her hallucinatory auditory experiences after listening to Bach at a high volume. The brain scans showed the area for melody and tones were being reached, and the brain no longer needed to invent hallucinatory senses to compensate.

In the most silent place on earth, a chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, Minnesota, you can hear your eyeballs move. Some people experience hallucinations, while others don't.

The reason why this happens isn't clear yet, but the thinking is that electrical signals excite or inhibit areas that are affected or not affected. Neuronal activity is promoted or impeded. When something is going on in one place, it's not going on in another. Not all areas are active at once.

Unlike hyperactivity, Charles Bonnet syndrome is underactivity that triggers the brain to hallucinate and fill in the gaps. But this time, there is no reality checking to course correct. A feedback loop is created where the brain self-references it's output as it's own input, and doesn't take input from the outside world.

Drug use that produces hallucinations are the same subjective induction that isn't coming from reality.

David Nutt did a small study with 20 people, giving them either LSD or a placebo. In their brain scans, areas that normally don't communicate between vision, attention, movement and hearing, were more connected. Conversely, there was a diminishment in areas associated with a sense of self and identity. People who take psychedelics, or those that meditate, are changing their electro-chemical functionality. Many experience a subjective inner state induced by themselves or a substance, that has them feel their self disintegrating and feel as though they are becoming one with the universe. This is often called an alleged "ego-death".

Hallucinations have one thing in common, a disruption of the normal reality checking mechanism to make sure input is coming from the external reality, and not the subjective internal processing in a feedback loop of fantasy. An over-reliance and overemphasis is placed on internally generated sensations, misinterpreting them as through they actually came from the external world.

Those with hallucinatory issues, can apply a tried and tested placebo "mind-over-body" self-hypnosis method to manage their issue. By monitoring their thoughts which affect how their brain will think about and expect/predict reality, theyc an avoid generating some hallucinations. Many can also learn to accept, rather than reject or be fearful of their hallucinations, and study or analyze them to try to understand more and gain more insight. Putting one's attention back onto something real, a real smell, real touch, can help to suppress the hallucination as well. It might be wishful thinking, but we can fool ourselves and believe it for the better or worse, why not make use of it to our advantage here.

It seems hallucinations are a result of way we construct reality when things are not working properly internally. Signals are not getting where they need to, or signals are going places they don't normally go to and get mixed up in how they are normally processed, creating false sensory constructs that are taken to be real, when they are not.

So no, we are not hallucinating reality, for the most part. We do a lot of predictive processing and reality verification. When this goes awry, and signals get confused or lost, the brain steps to fill in some gaps or do what they chemicals are making it do: create and process sensory stimulus from itself instead of taking it from reality.

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Thank you for reading! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.

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[Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

[Sources: 1, 2, 3]

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Author: Kris Nelson / @krnel
Contact: [email protected]
Date: 2016-11-07, 7:04pm EST