hallucination

hallucination
hallucinational, hallucinative /heuh looh"seuh nay'tiv, -neuh tiv/, adj.
/heuh looh'seuh nay"sheuhn/, n.
1. a sensory experience of something that does not exist outside the mind, caused by various physical and mental disorders, or by reaction to certain toxic substances, and usually manifested as visual or auditory images.
2. the sensation caused by a hallucinatory condition or the object or scene visualized.
3. a false notion, belief, or impression; illusion; delusion.
[1640-50; < L hallucination- (s. of (h)allucinatio) a wandering of the mind. See HALLUCINATE, -ION]
Syn. 1. phantasm, aberration. See illusion.

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Perception of objects, sounds, or sensations having no demonstrable reality, usually arising from a disorder of the nervous system or in response to certain drugs (see hallucinogen).

Hallucinations are in many ways similar to dreams: they derive their content from perceptions known to memory, though these can be greatly transformed. Hallucinations can result when attention collapses from intense arousal due to extreme anxiety, fatigue, excitement, or other causes. They figure prominently in the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

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Introduction

      the experience of perceiving objects or events that do not have an external source, such as hearing one's name called by a voice that no one else seems to hear. A hallucination is distinguished from an illusion, which is a misinterpretation of an actual stimulus.

      A historical survey of the study of hallucinations reflects the development of scientific thought in psychiatry, psychology, and neurobiology. By 1838 the significant relationship between the content of dreams (dream) and of hallucinations had been pointed out. In the 1840s the occurrence of hallucinations under a wide variety of conditions (including psychological and physical stress) as well as their genesis through the effects of such drugs as stramonium and hashish had been described.

      French physician Alexandre-Jacques-François Brierre de Boismont in 1845 described many instances of hallucinations associated with intense concentration, or with musing, or simply occurring in the course of psychiatric disorder. In the last half of the 19th century, studies of hallucinations continued. Investigators in France were particularly oriented toward abnormal psychological function, and from this came descriptions of hallucinosis during sleepwalking and related reactions. In the 1880s English neurologist John Hughlings Jackson (Jackson, John Hughlings) described hallucination as being released or triggered by the nervous system (nervous system, human).

      Other definitions of the term emerged later. Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler (Bleuler, Eugen) (1857–1939) defined hallucinations as “perceptions without corresponding stimuli from without,” while the Psychiatric Dictionary in 1940 referred to hallucination as the “apparent perception of an external object when no such object is present.” A spirited interest in hallucinations continued well into the 20th century. Sigmund Freud (Freud, Sigmund)'s concepts of conscious and unconscious activities added new significance to the content of dreams and hallucinations. It was theorized that infants (infancy) normally hallucinate the objects and processes that give them gratification. Although the notion has since been disputed, this “regression” hypothesis (i.e., that hallucinating is a regression, or return, to infantile ways) is still employed, especially by those who find it clinically useful. During the same period, others put forth theories that were more broadly biological than Freud's but that had more points in common with Freud than with each other.

The nature of hallucinations
      The general theory of hallucinations here delineated rests upon two fundamental assumptions. One assumption states that life experiences influence the brain in such a way as to leave, in the brain, enduring physical changes that have variously been called neural traces, templates, or engrams. Ideas and images are held to derive from the incorporation and activation of these engrams in complex circuits involving nerve cells. Such circuits in the cortex (outer layers) of the brain appear to subserve the neurophysiology of memory, thought, imagination, and fantasy (thought). The emotions associated with these intellectual and perceptual functions seem to be mediated through cortex connections with the deeper parts of the brain (the limbic system or “visceral brain,” for example), thus permitting a dynamic interplay between perception and emotion through transactions that appear to take place largely at unconscious levels.

      Conscious awareness (consciousness) is found to be mediated by the ascending midbrain (nervous system, human) reticular activating system (a network of nerve cells in the brainstem). Analyses of hallucinations reported by sufferers of neurological disorders and by neurosurgical patients in whom the brain is stimulated electrically have shown the importance of the temporal lobes (at the sides of the brain) to auditory hallucinations, for example, and of other functionally relevant parts of the brain in this process.

      A second assumption states that the total human personality is best understood in terms of the constant interplay of forces that continually emanate from inside (as internal physiological activity) and from outside the individual (as sensory stimuli). Such transactions between the environment and the individual may be said to exert an integrating and organizing influence upon memory traces stored in the nervous system and to affect the patterns in which sensory engrams are activated to produce experiences called images, fantasies, dreams, or hallucinations, as well as the emotions associated with these patterns. If such a constantly shifting balance exists between internal and external environmental forces, physiological considerations (e.g., brain function) as well as cultural and experiential factors emerge as major determinants of the content and meaning of hallucinations.

      The brain is bombarded constantly by sensory impulses, but most of these are excluded from consciousness in a dynamically shifting, selective fashion. The exclusion seems to be accomplished through the exercise of integrative inner mechanisms that focus one's awareness on selected parts of potential experience. (The sound of a ticking clock, for example, fades in and out of awareness.) Functioning simultaneously, these mechanisms survey information that is stored within the brain, select tiny samples needed to give adaptive significance to the incoming flow of information, and bring forth only a few items for actual recall from the brain's extensive “memory banks.”

Induction of hallucinations

Direct brain stimulation
      Hallucinatory experiences can be brought about through direct stimulation of the exposed brain, as in cases of local cortical arousal under the neurosurgeon's stimulating electrode. Under circumstances other than surgery or such situations as, for example, some forms of epilepsy, however, there must be a decrease in the forces that ordinarily dominate consciousness before hallucinations occur. These inhibiting forces require for their maintenance a relatively high level of sensory input of appropriate quality and frequency.

      The ways in which the reticular network of cells in the brainstem acts as a regulatory and integrating system for these relationships remain under intensive study. Since levels of brain arousal during sleep and wakefulness also are mediated via reticular formation activity, sleeping and dreaming merit consideration as hallucinatory activities. In the process of falling asleep, a person passes through a period of “partial sleep” in which awareness of the environment drops rapidly but in which the level of cortical arousal (which falls less rapidly) remains sufficiently high to permit some appreciation of external stimulation. Thus, the so-called hypnagogic (induced by drowsiness) phenomena occur.

Hypnagogic hallucinations
      Common hypnagogic hallucinations may be visual (e.g., scenes from the previous few hours appear) or auditory (e.g., one seems to hear one's name called). A frequently occurring hypnagogic hallucination is the sensation of loss of support or balance, perhaps accompanied by a fragmentary “dream” of falling, followed immediately by a jerking reflex recovery movement (the myoclonic jerk) that may jolt the sleeper back into wakefulness.

Dreams (dream)
      The first stages of sleep appear to be dream-free. During this phase, measurements taken by an electroencephalograph (electroencephalography) (EEG) will record the sleeper producing large, slow brain waves. Sensory stimuli from without (such as noise or cold) or stimuli from within the body (such as dyspepsia or anxiety), plus a somewhat regular spontaneous fluctuation in the depth of sleep, will periodically (perhaps every 90 minutes or so) bring the sleeper into a state that favours perceptual release, in which case dreaming tends to take place. This state (with specific EEG signs and rapid movements of the closed eyes) probably occurs several times every night, so that more than 20 percent of an average person's sleep is taken up with several dreams, each of about 10 to 15 minutes' duration. At the time of awakening, the typical sleeper again passes through a period of perceptual release, often experiencing dreams that increase in intensity, and perhaps may have the hallucinations of “partial sleep,” these now being called hypnopompic (associated with a semiconscious state before awakening) experiences.

      A simplified but perhaps helpful way of characterizing these conditions might be to imagine someone standing at a window opposite a fireplace, looking out at a garden in the sunset. The person may be thoroughly absorbed by the view of the outside world and fail to visualize the interior of the room at all. As it becomes darker outside, images of the objects in the room behind the person are reflected dimly in the window glass. For a time, then, the viewer may see either the garden (if gazing into the distance) or the reflection of the room's interior (when focusing on the glass). Night falls, but the fire still illuminates the room. The watcher now sees in the glass a reflection of the interior of the room, which appears to be outside the window. This illusion becomes dimmer as the fire dies down, and, finally, when it is dark both outside and within, nothing more is seen. If the fire flares up from time to time, the visions in the glass reappear.

      Another analogy might be that dreams, like the stars, are shining all the time, even though the stars are not often seen in daytime. If, however, there is an eclipse of the sun, or if a viewer watches the sky after sunset or before sunrise, then the stars, like dreams, though often forgotten, may be seen.

      A more brain-related concept is that of a continuous information-processing activity (a kind of “preconscious stream”) that is influenced by both conscious and unconscious forces and that constitutes the potential supply of dream content. Hallucinations in the waking state also would involve the same phenomenon, produced by a somewhat different set of psychological or physiological circumstances.

Excessive excitation
      It is valuable to consider the probable relationship between the level of physiological arousal in the brain and information processing during the waking state. The functions of consciousness apparently reach an optimal point in relation to level of arousal, beyond which they disorganize progressively as arousal increases. The presence of marked arousal (produced, for example, by extreme anxiety or by chemical stimulation of the brain) is accompanied by marked disturbance of concentration. Again, contact with external stimuli is impaired, this time by excessive input that “jams the circuits,” in which case spontaneous dissociative experiences may occur. As arousal increases further, the hallucinations of full-blown delirium or psychotic excitement may appear with frightening vividness, intensity, and emotional accompaniment. Greater brain arousal might result in generalized seizure phenomena, as in epilepsy.

Sensory deprivation
      When people are kept in isolation (sensory deprivation), information input via the senses (such as hearing and sight) is reduced. A person who remains alert during a period of sensory deprivation is likely to experience vivid fantasies and, perhaps, hallucinations. A slight amount of stimulation directed toward the senses may further increase the likelihood of hallucination. If stimuli are markedly reduced and the level of arousal is high, the hallucinations can be especially vivid and emotionally charged.

Loss of sleep
      Progressive sleep loss appears to decrease one's capacity for integrating realistic perceptions of the external environment. Hallucinations probably will occur in anyone if wakefulness is sufficiently prolonged; anxiety is likely to hasten or to enhance hallucinatory production. (The disorganizing effect of sleep deprivation has been exploited in extorting confessions from prisoners.) Observations suggest that fleeting hallucinations typically begin after two or three days without sleep, and that after 100 to 200 sleepless hours a progressive personality disorganization will develop, marked by periods of hallucinosis or, in some cases, by the reappearance of a previously existing psychiatric disorder.

hypnosis and trance states
      The mystic achieves hallucinations by gaining control of his own dissociative mechanisms; perhaps this is a form of self-hypnosis (autohypnosis). Such individuals can accomplish an astonishing withdrawal from the environment by prolonged intense concentration (e.g., by gazing at some object). The hallucinations may be of the type in which the person perceives his “inner self” to leave his body to view himself (autoscopic hallucination) or to be transported to new surroundings. Alternatively, the hallucinations may take the form of unique visual imagery; for example, the yantra is a visual hallucination of a coloured, geometrical image that appears at a level of trance of the sort experienced by practitioners of Yoga. The recurrence of certain designs and patterns in human hallucinatory experience is probably related to structural aspects of the visual system.

      Ordinary experimental hypnotic and posthypnotic suggestions of hallucinations are well known. The hypnotic subject (who can be described as a person in a controlled dissociative state) may on occasion also experience spontaneous hallucinations in the absence of specific suggestions.

      Prolonged monotony or fixation of attention may lead to diminished responsiveness to the environment with a general effect similar to that of absolute reduction of stimulation or of hypnotic trance. Under these conditions such dissociative phenomena as “highway hypnosis” among drivers of motor vehicles may occur. Similar phenomena that occur among aviators have been called fascination or fixation. During prolonged, monotonous flight, pilots may experience visual, auditory, and bodily (kinesthetic) hallucinations; for example, a pilot may suddenly feel that the plane is in a spin or a dive or that it is upside down, even though it is flying level. A kinesthetic hallucination such as this can be so vivid that the pilot will attempt “corrective” maneuvering of the aircraft, with potentially tragic results.

Sensory defects
      Many other examples of hallucinations related to decrease or impairment of sensory input are known in clinical medicine. Visual hallucinations may occur in cases of cataract (opaque lens in the eye) and have been compared with phantom limb (phantom limb syndrome) experiences (e.g., “pain” in the toes of a missing foot), since there is an absence of normal stimuli from the environment in both cases. Individuals who suffer a progressive loss of hearing may experience auditory hallucinations. A case of combined visual and auditory hallucinations in a patient with progressive blindness (from cataracts) and with deafness from ear disease (otosclerosis) has been observed. Hallucinations of the phantom limb probably arise as the projection of an experientially established set of brain engrams in the absence of long-accustomed sensory input from the missing part. Differences in nerve impulses from those once produced by a missing limb may cause the phantom to be perceived as being distorted in proportion or in size.

Psychological factors
      Although the role of expectation continues to be studied in relation to perception, there can be no doubt that psychological factors influence the nature of hallucinated objects. It may be that the psychophysiologic basis for recognition requires the unconscious preparation of a perceptual engram (the physically stored memory of a previously seen object, for example) against which to match incoming sensory information for identification, significance, and meaning in terms of past experience. If some external object is present but inadequately recognized, an incorrect perceptual engram may be activated to be experienced as an illusion; in the absence of an external stimulus, such an engram is perceived as a hallucination. This may account for the specificity of collective visions (i.e., those shared by more than one person). Among lifeboat survivors at sea, for example, several people who share similar expectancies may see a nonexistent ship projected against the blank screen of empty sea and sky. Such an experience may persist in some of the people even after a logical belief in its impossibility has been communicated to all.

      Multiple factors undoubtedly combine in bringing about the psychiatric symptoms of the psychoses (psychosis); these symptoms often resemble the waking dreams in which hallucinations (usually auditory) may figure prominently. Such additive effects can also be demonstrated among “normal” people in the laboratory; for example, one may readily produce signs of hallucinations among sleep-deprived subjects or among subjects in a state of sensory isolation by administering otherwise subhallucinatory doses of drugs such as LSD or mescaline. In hospital cases of acute psychotic reactions with hallucinosis, combinations of factors clearly can be inferred to be at work: hereditary and cultural predispositions; excessive arousal in anxiety or panic; auto-intoxication (self-poisoning via deranged body physiology) through stress, exhaustion, sleep loss, and dehydration (water loss); and dissociative mechanisms that impair or distort the reception of information from a frightening or threatening social environment.

Chemical factors
      Hallucinations may be produced by chemical changes deriving from internal metabolic disturbances that are otherwise engendered inside of the body, or that originate from outside of the body. Some chemicals that produce hallucinatory experiences seem to act by reducing sensory input; for example, dramatic hallucinatory recall of intense experiences from the recent past can be brought about by injections of anesthetic drugs (drug) such as sodium amobarbital, which favours the conditions for perceptual release. Hallucinations during induction of (and emergence from) general surgical anesthesia induced by a variety of other chemicals are well-known and can be explained on the same basis.

      Such hallucinogenic (hallucinogen) chemicals seem to impair sensory input by decreasing the transmission of nerve impulses by raising the resistance of the nervous system (nervous system, human) to their passage. Other hallucinogens increase nerve transmission, disrupting the orderly input of information and “jamming the circuits.” Many botanically derived hallucinogens seem to function this way—e.g., LSD and the ergot (a fungus) that grows on rye, psilocybin (psilocin and psilocybin) from mushrooms, mescaline from the peyote cactus, and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) from marijuana. Hallucinations also can be induced by input overload produced mechanically, such as bombarding several sensory systems with intense stimuli simultaneously (e.g., with bright flashing lights and loud noises).

      Hallucinogenic drugs are substances that, administered in pharmacological doses (not toxic overdoses), create gross distortions in perception without causing loss of consciousness. These distortions frequently include hallucinations. Such compounds also are likely to exert profound effects on mood, thought, and observable behaviour. These resemble (or mimic) the disturbances generated in spontaneously occurring psychoses; indeed some hallucinogens have been termed “psychotomimetic” or “psychotogenic” on this account.

      Research scientists and clinicians such as psychiatrists have sometimes deliberately taken these compounds in efforts to understand how it feels to be a severely psychiatric patient. It has been hoped that the study of such chemically induced “model psychoses” would lead to improved methods of treatment. In addition, some psychiatric workers speak of “psychedelic (psychedelic drug)” (mind-manifesting) substances, controversially held to expand perceptual horizons and insight among a variety of people under treatment for such disorders as alcoholism, rigid personality patterns, and sexual frigidity.

      The potentially dangerous psychological changes produced by psychedelic chemicals have sometimes been interpreted as “loosening ego structures,” “dissolving ego boundaries,” or “disrupting ego defenses.” Such changes may include the experiencing of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions that are usually outside the individual's awareness (“unconscious” or “repressed”). Persons who take such drugs (e.g., LSD) may become hypersuggestible, emotionally unstable, and unusually aware of their own reactions and those of others. Feelings of transcendence of ordinary experience, distortions in time perception (e.g., time may seem to slow down), and hallucinations have also been reported.

      It appears that all human behaviour and experience (normal as well as abnormal) is well attended by illusory and hallucinatory phenomena. While the relationship of these phenomena to mental illness has been well documented, their role in everyday life has perhaps not been considered enough. Greater understanding of illusions and hallucinations among normal people may provide explanations for experiences otherwise relegated to the uncanny, “extrasensory,” or supernatural. Such understanding may also illuminate the remarkable certainty that individuals express in their contrary interpretations of the same basic information. “Reality,” like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder.

Louis Jolyon West Ed.

Additional Reading
Works on the psychology of hallucination include A. Brierre de Boismont, Hallucinations: or, The Rational History of Apparitions, Dreams, Ecstasy, Magnetism, and Somnambulism (1853, reprinted 1976; originally published in French, 1852), an early classic; William Grey Walter, The Neurophysiological Aspects of Hallucinations and Illusory Experience (1960), visual phenomena viewed by a brain researcher; Louis Jolyon West (ed.), Hallucinations (1962), an analysis of the subject by contributors from several scientific disciplines; Peter D. Slade and Richard P. Bentall, Sensory Deception: A Scientific Analysis of Hallucination (1988), which discusses therapeutic approaches; and Ronald K. Siegel, Fire in the Brain: Clinical Tales of Hallucination (1992), a collection of case studies.Louis Jolyon West Ed.

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Universalium. 2010.

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  • hallucination — [ a(l)lysinasjɔ̃ ] n. f. • 1660; lat. hallucinatio 1 ♦ Méd. Perception pathologique de faits, d objets qui n existent pas, de sensations en l absence de tout stimulus extérieur. ⇒ illusion, onirisme, rêve. Hallucinations visuelles (⇒ mirage,… …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Hallucination — Hal*lu ci*na tion ( n[=a] sh[u^]n), n. [L. hallucinatio: cf. F. hallucination.] 1. The act of hallucinating; a wandering of the mind; error; mistake; a blunder. [1913 Webster] This must have been the hallucination of the transcriber. Addison.… …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • hallucination — (n.) in the pathological/psychological sense of seeing or hearing something which is not there, 1640s, from L. hallucinationem (nom. hallucinatio), from pp. stem of hallucinari (see HALLUCINATE (Cf. hallucinate)). Hallucination is distinct from… …   Etymology dictionary

  • Hallucination — (v. lat., Sinnestäuschung), 1) im Allgemeinen diejenige sinnliche Vorstellung, welche nicht durch einen wirklichen Gegenstand der Wahrnehmung, also von außen, erregt wird, sondern der eigenen Thätigkeit des Organismus u. namentlich des… …   Pierer's Universal-Lexikon

  • hallucination — index figment, insanity, phantom Burton s Legal Thesaurus. William C. Burton. 2006 …   Law dictionary

  • hallucination — • hallucination, sinnesvilla, synvilla, skenbild, inbillning, illusion, drömbild, irrbild • inbillning, fantasi, illusion, dröm, villfarelse, fiktion …   Svensk synonymlexikon

  • hallucination — *delusion, mirage, illusion Analogous words: *apparition, phantasm, phantom, wraith: fantasy, *fancy, vision, dream, nightmare …   New Dictionary of Synonyms

  • hallucination — [n] dream, delusion aberration, apparition, fantasy, figment of the imagination*, head trip*, illusion, mirage, phantasm, phantasmagoria, phantom, trip*, vision, wraith; concepts 529,532,690 Ant. experience, fact, reality, truth …   New thesaurus

  • hallucination — [hə lo͞o΄si nā′shən] n. [L hallucinatio < hallucinari: see HALLUCINATE] 1. the apparent perception of sights, sounds, etc. that are not actually present: it may occur in certain mental disorders 2. the imaginary object apparently seen, heard,… …   English World dictionary

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