A new study published online shows a test that could distinguish those who have a possibility of hallucination or psychotic episodes. The said experiment concluded that hallucinations came from the facts or things we only know and perceived rather than a product of our mind.
Researchers from the Cardiff and the University of Cambridge conducted studies based on 16 control groups or normal test subjects and 18 established cases of psychosis. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last Oct. 8.
"When we open our eyes, typically most of us have this feeling of a very clear picture of the world that's out there, that's actually not really the case ...," Christoph Teufel of the Cardiff University stated. "We use what we already know about the world in order to generate an unambiguous perception of the world."
Hallucination is medically defined as sensing things while awake that appear to be real, but instead have been created by the mind. It could include sensory perceptions such as feeling, hearing, seeing and smelling certain factors or things that are not actually there. Hallucinations are pretty common in mild form and are not bad, as these are sometimes relevant and are familiar with some artists. However, in severe cases, hallucinations have proven to be a symptom of psychotic cases and schizophrenia.
In this study, the test subjects were shown a two-tone image of black and white and were asked what they perceived. The researchers then show the original picture of the two-tone image without further explanation. This process was repeated several times. It was concluded that the ones who already had mild cases of hallucinations or psychotic cases had no trouble with the images than the "normal" ones. The test subjects from the normal group who had been better at distinguishing the images have been concluded with the tendency of developing personality disorders and psychotic tendencies. It suggests that hallucinations were just a human tendency to process what they see and is a product of what was already known by the person's mind.
This has been a big break on the known presumptions on hallucinations in people. "These findings are important because, not only do they tell us that the emergence of key symptoms of mental illness can be understood in terms of an altered balance in normal brain functions, importantly, they also suggest that these symptoms and experiences do not reflect a 'broken' brain but rather one that is striving - in a very natural way - to make sense of incoming data that are ambiguous,"Naresh Subramaniam of the University of Cambridge said.
