Talk:Hallucination

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However one may interpret the causality and reality, i.e. relevance of hallucinations, it seems to be clear that their occurrence strongly correlates with two extremes of sensory activation: either sensory flooding (sensory overload) or sensory deprivation. Both, of course, may be caused by external (as rave party or solitude) or internal factors (as drugs, brain injury, illness, or sleep deprivation).

Is there any evidence for this ? Seems a bit speculative to me. I think many of the hallucinatory sensory deprivation effects were found to be demand characteristics. - Vaughan 16:27, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I've removed this paragraph as I've found no research to back it up. Objections and further evidence I may of missed welcome ! - Vaughan 17:42, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Do my eyes deceive me ?? I belive the claim that taste and smell to be the most common forms of hallucination to be totally erroneous. Surely sight and sound are the most common forms of hallucination. Taste and smell sensory apparatus are not so easily deluded these are the rarest NOT commonest forms of hallucination. Think about what you are writing about! How often do your ears or eyes deceive you? If you believe the tongue and nose to be more frequent culprits of deception you are a very strange person indeed!!! The eye and ear are easily deceived, the tongue and nose being more primitive , less developed organs are far less prone to deception/malfunction. The poster has clearly never experienced an hallucination in their lives. The Norwikian 31 August

The claim that taste and smell are the commonest form of hallucinations are from the research referenced in this article (see reference 2). Sight and sound may be thought of as the commonest form of hallucination because these are the most prominent from hallucinogenic drugs. These are atypical forms of hallucination and as research has shown (refs 1 and 2) many people hallucinate outside the context of drug use and mental illness. BTW, hallucinations almost certainly arise from the brain rather than the sense organs themselves. - Vaughan 07:21, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Well, what about the blindspot of the eye? Aren't we basically hallucinating the material where our blindspot is all the time? And auditory hallucinations are pretty common, actually, they're just not necessarily recognised as hallucinations because of their ambiguous nature. Words are very commonly hallucinated, both visually and auditorially... And when one really gets down to it, one realises that much of what we call 'reality' is just a hallucination in itself. We see what we expect to see, relate what we see to memories, and build upon these memories to form new and changing realities. In our base form, we don't even perceive the 'physical' world remotely the way we do when we have developed. As infants, we are incapable of relating objects around us to memories, as those memories don't exist, and thus our realities are very vague and indiscernable as infants. Infants aren't just 'stupid', their perception of the world in general is ultra-simplistic. Khranus

>I added a prominent reference to illusion in the first sentence, as most readers will not be familiar with the psychiatric meaning of the word. Misperception of stimulus can be just as indicative of mental illness as perception in the absence of stimulus. -Komodon- 24 Jan 2004

naturally you have to define what counts as hallucination. start there. then we can discuss what happens most. if the blind spot is a hallucination, which it could be considered to be, then i side with eye people. obviously some dude did a study and found taste and smell hallucinations to be most common. but they used some definition for hallucination there. i like all halucinations. i am totally tweeked out right now, sleep deprivation may be my favorite trip yet. no chemicals needed here. peace.

Hallucination, as defined here as a "false sensory perception in the absence of an external stimulus..." is not very good--it is too judgemental of what is "truth", doesn't specify well what is "external stimulus", and worst of all, doesn't distinguish itself from misperception.

A hallucination should be reserved for a much stronger situation, not simply of "misperception", as this is entirely too common an occurence--instead, a hallucinatory experience requires a situation where the individual does not have the facilities to distinguish misperception in the wake of other perceptual experience, even after an unbounded amount of time. That is, it must be believed that the non-real experience was actually real. If one "hears voices" that aren't there, and it is recognized quickly that indeed they were "fake"--then this can not be considered a hallucination. (Somewhat similar--if you find yourself wondering "am I going crazy?"--indeed, you most likely are not.)

I think this much stronger distinction may help illuminate the processes of mind and perception better, and be reserved for truly extraordinary circumstances. Again, we all mis-perceive the world around us, but use other perceptions to validate or falsify each other--hallucinations should be reserved for situations where one cannot/is not falsifying that which to other observers would be considered false.

Some experts believe involuntary rapid eye movement is strongly linked to hallucinatory mindstates including the majority of normal dreaming. Sufficiently unrelenting REM deprivation during sleep (by any one of several mechanisms) is believed to be causative in "shifting" REM (hallucinations) to wake states. Numerous negative REM effects and adverse drug reactions (ADRs) from antidepressant users have begun to strongly cast doubt upon expert advice such as the following...

http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/REM_sleep/id/6336

"A few decades ago, it was thought that to be deprived of rem sleep would result in mental disturbance - it was an erroneous belief. It is understood now that some drugs, such as certain anti-depressants, completely abolish rem sleep - and yet there are no noticeable deleterious effects in users."

The above quote is dubious. REM appears now to be linked to many health and mental benefits and REM deprivation appears to be causative in numerous deleterious effects.

Breakthrough in understanding of eye physiology & function including dreaming and hallucination... www.ghuth.com

"The term hallucination describes a value judgement by the scientific establishment that perceptions which are not based on physical sensory reality are essentially meaningless and of no value whatsoever." - I seriously doubt that any such value judgement is implicit in the term, or indeed held by psychiatry in general. 24.128.56.150 03:02, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I've removed the value judgements section, because, as mentioned above, I don't think it adds much. Other comments welcome. - Vaughan 19:00, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Difference between Hallucination and Illusion — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doctorbruno (talk • contribs) 19:09, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I have tried to correct the spelling of 'Sidgewick, H.' in the References section, but could not work out how to get at it! The Sidgwick in question is the Cambridge moral philosopher Henry Sidgwick (q.v. - he has an excellent entry in Wikipedia in his own right). Ranger2006

I could find no mention of this type of hallucination as described by Oliver Sacks of page 70 of his new book "The Mind's Eye", which apparently results form "disorders of the visual pathway", and which have apparently been studied by Dominic ffytche. Not good enough. This whole article has a definite bias towards offering psychiatric rather than neurological explanations for hallucinations.

I could find absolutely nothing in this article that would help to explain the difference between synaesthesia and hallucination, in fact I could find no mention of synesthesia at all. Not good enough.

Answer: Synesthesia is simpler than a hallucinatory effect. It is the accidental association by the brain of some otherwise unrelated things. Once made, this association becomes automatic, and thoughts or perceptions of one of the connected things immediately evokes thoughts or perceptions of the other(s). A hallucination is the accidental and involuntary generation of a stimulus completely within one's own mind. One experiencing a hallucination perceives things which do not actually exist, whereas one experiencing a synesthetic effect generally perceives at first a real object or concept, which is connected with one which is absent or irrelevant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.31.164.144 (talk) 06:30, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Occurs often when extremely fatigued. Perhaps this term could be included. 134.106.199.5 11:56, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

• What exactly is a pseudo-hallucination? Is it where you think you see an hallucination, but you really don't (an hallucination of an hallucination)? Eridani (talk) 10:58, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
  • The term "pseudo-hallucination" has been used for situations where a subject has a sensory experience in the absence of an appropriate external stimulus and with the full impact of a real perception, but the subject is aware that it is not real. A better term is "non-psychotic hallucination". --Nasorenga (talk) 15:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

The text in the introductory paragraph, "pseudohallucination, which does not mimic real perception, but is not under voluntary control" is not correct. The given definition does include pseudo-hallucinations. I suggest that pseudo-hallucination should be removed from the list of phenomena excluded by the definition. --Nasorenga (talk) 15:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

the scumbag was here i will rule the world with my facist veiws on goverment.god is not real? I don't have a problem with the article expressing what some people like to believe, but this is an encyclopedia. ~ Strathmeyer 08:28, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I checked the reference regarding HH and brainstem abnormalities. Most of the time HH are associated with narcolepsy. The authors then say that HH can be associated with brainstem abnormalities, but this is not often the case.

This seems like an important viewpoint to have in the article, but at the same time it's a minority viewpoint, and that should be reflected in the amount of weight it receives as per WP:NPOV. Currently it takes up about half of the very short section on auditory hallucinations. I think it would be better to expand the first part (conventional view), rather than to cut the second part (HVM view). --Ginkgo100 ^talk 21:17, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think theres anything much notable about this group. I mean...Theres no point to it. Yes, everyone hears voices in their head, or in white ::noise, especially things like names. Its not at all unusual. So what could this group possibly do? What is the purpose of that group's existance?

Hearing voices is not in itself a sign of mental illness.

Hearing voices is experienced by many people who do not have symptoms that would lead to diagnosis of mental illness.

Hearing voices is often related to problems in life history.

If hearing voices causes distress, the person who hears the voices can learn strategies to cope with the experience. This is often achieved by  ::confronting the past problems that lie behind the experience.

No. I cannot support an orginization that is so incompatible with a normal mode of logical existance to the piont that it should not exist. I think ::whoever wrote this might be a bot. 74.132.249.206 (talk) 03:42, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

According to encyclopedia britannica, the dreams are "a hallucinatory experience that occurs during sleep" and in the wikipedia page regarding hallucinations Hallucination there is no single mention of these normal hallucinations which happens during sleep (and happens about 2 hours for 8 hours sleeping Dream). Also, see more about hallucinations in the sane people: Hallucinations_in_the_sane

So, I think that a good ideea is to add a reference to dreams in this page (not only a link, but something like "hallucinations during sleep happens most of the time during REM stage of sleep, and this experience is called a dream).

_{The article states: "These definitions distinguish hallucinations from the related phenomena of dreaming, which does not involve consciousness". One can be conscious while sleeping: see lucid dreams. Once we become lucid in a dream, does the imagery we perceive automatically become a hallucination? Or were they always hallucinations and being conscious has nothing to do with it? Either way, the former statement is incorrect and I will change it if no objections are posed. Feel free to change it before I do, you'll probably do a better job at it. Thank you. --Thafrenchman (talk) 23:43, 11 December 2008 (UTC)}

moved the following sentences to the talk page for source verifications:

In a 2005 study of pubescent males, it was discovered that 94 out of 100 males who claimed to be sexually attracted to a member of the opposite sex experienced hallucinations in which they sustained erections and inserted their penises in their partners mouths, vaginas, or anuses. Furthermore, in another study, males who claimed to be drug addicts or alcoholics reported hallucinations of drugs and alcohol use.

This sounds a bit absurd to me; there is no reference to this information. Aside from that, this doesn't make any sense: of course men who claim to be sexually active are going to report that they had sex, and people who claim to be alcoholics are going to report having drank alcohol. If they had a true hallucination to that effect, they wouldn't know that it was a hallucination. (Patrick 15:12, 9 May 2007 (UTC))

This sentence: "Recent reports have also mentioned that it is possible to get musical hallucinations from listening to music for long periods of time." needs citation... which reports exactly? I do not disagree with the statement, in fact I think it is the tip of an iceberg, I am currently reading Oliver Sacks' (a leading neurologist) book Musicophilia that discusses musical hallucinations several times, both Sacks' own experiences of such hallucinations and the experiences of his patients. It does not seem to be necessary for a person to have a neurological illness to experience auditory hallucinations. Perhaps this page needs to be linked to the wiki page on 'ear worms', which also needs expanding. (User:unregistered/Adam 17:56 GMT, 4 January 2008)

I have a problem with this passage from the introduction- "...a perception in the absence of a stimulus that is believed to be genuine, ie. the subject experiences an imaginary stimulus as being real". I never thought that the person experiencing a hallucination had to believe that what they are experiencing is real. The passage seems to be suggesting that if a person is sane enough to understand that what they are seeing is not really there, they are not hallucinating at all. Among other things, this is troublesome because it means that what defines a hallucination centers on higher brain functions rather than sensory perception, and I find that rather counter-intuitive and strange. I will definitely drop my objections if someone shows that the above is the accepted medical definition, but if it is just what someone wrote unsourced I think we should change it.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 07:42, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the above. I look for some references. Hallucinations are perception of stimuli that are not there, whether or not the person believes they are real. A person may take a pscyhopdelic drug and see things that are not there, however even if the person knows they are just the result of the drugs, they are still hallucinations.--Expo512 (talk) 06:33, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

True, IMHO. People can have 'visual disturbances' caused by medically prescribed drugs for instance, or be tripping on acid and know they are tripping. To believe the hallucinations are real, is more like psychosis. Merkinsmum 23:26, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely, I have had major visual hallucinations during migraine attacks. The first time I didn't know it was either a hallucination or a migraine, but I knew the big red and blue patch of light in the middle of my field of vision wasn't real.The Yowser (talk) 10:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Sometiimes, if a person is half-asleep, he/she will visualize images that are not actually there, while fully aware of their surroundings. Is this stated? I can't seem to find it. Lazylaces (Talk to me 13:04, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like hypnagogia to me, but I'm not really sure.209.244.187.155 (talk) 23:02, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, check out the article on hypnagogia for some more information on that. Plus, Google is your friend, and you should look up some sources about that, if you'd like. They're super-abundant on the internet, but I'm not sure very many are verifiable. Quintus314 (talk) 03:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

this article discusses mostly hallucinations of things that are most of the time complex images (i.e. identafiable objects, like seeing people or hearing voices,) and they often occur for a prolonged period of time. is there any information on the hallucinations that i experience, which are often more basic and fleeting (i.e. a wave of static momentarily passes over my vision or the mental 'omnipresence' of an idea or number). does anyone know anything about this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.252.199.197 (talk) 19:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Are certain types of halluciations common among certain people? For instance, my great-grandmother (15 years ago), in a couple years before her death, would see babies on the floor. My great aunt recently had the same thing happen. The former had Parkinsons Disease, and the latter has dementia, so I was wondering if that could be the cause. I read about the size aspect being part of Charles Bonnet Syndrome, and that would match my great-grandmother, if she was seeing little poeple and thinking it was babies, but I think my aunt's eyes are working well. (Then again, she had brain cancer, and the radiation plus chemo, and then the cancer possibly returning, has harmed her brain a lot. With how little she communicates right now, they might be going, anyway.)

I know you can't give a medical diagnosis, but my question isn't really about that, it's more about whether "seeing babies" is a special type of hallucination or not.209.244.187.155 (talk) 23:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Something tells me the article doesn't mention them... EverSince (talk) 12:15, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure, but I've noticed a problem with the first sentence: "A hallukinashon, in the broadest sense, is a persepshon in the absence of a stimyoulus." Ummm... that's completely confusing. People, seriously, this is NOT Uncyclopedia. You can't just put in a bunch of random crap and call it a joke. I can't revert it back or change it to something more sensible because I don't know what words used to be in the places of "persepshon" and "stimyoulus". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.163.29.81 (talk) 05:01, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

What is exactly a pantheistic experience?? (mentioned in the stages of hallucinations)__Wayunga (talk) 21:33, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

As someone who was diagnosed with first episode psychosis two years ago and has had several full blown hallucinatory experiences (which usually include lots of auditory, visual and spatial hallucination) from this, I would say in my case the 'stages of hallucination' are accurate. What whoever wrote 'panentheistic experience' was trying to get at was that there may be a heavy spiritual or religious overtone to the hallucinatory experience, with one feeling as if they are god; are part of god and everything. A singular universal being I suppose? I have had this experience myself, so I am just drawing from what I know. Maybe that clears stuff up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.208.9.39 (talk) 13:07, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

First, I'd like to raise the question of how reliable a 36 year old text is, in a field as rapidly changing as this one. A lot has changed since 1975.

That said, if my appeal to reason isn't enough to have the article changed, how about one to conscience instead: Religious bias.

As a mental patient (yes, fellow Wikipedians, I'm finally confirming what you've all suspected, I am indeed, crazy as a loon, currently diagnosed schizoaffective) of 40-something years, I came here seeking more understanding, as I was then coming out of a 5-day episode. Fortunately, I was in a very serene state at the time, but I still kinda freaked (pardon my vernacular) when I read the bit about pantheism. I'm sure Visnu and Brahma are offended as well. Just hope Shiva doesn't read it, as I understand he can be pretty ugly when aroused. I can only imagine the consequences of declaring all Hindus insane, should he hear of it.

As a lover of the Goddess myself, (and many other spiritual entities) for at least 56 years, I was shocked to read that my profound religious experience is considered merely a symptom of a mental disorder by the medical community. Before resorting to my usual slash & burn editing style in Wikipedia, I thought it better to set the computer aside and return again with a fresh mind. After I'd cooled down, I understood the text to mean the same as above, a deep spiritual experience, but misleading language or not, the religious bias in the article is still obvious: "One god is OK, but it is nutz to believe in all the gods".

I'm less concerned about any religious issue here, than a humanitarian one. How many people who know they're in trouble will come here for information, only to be put off by the negative and judgmental tone? Perhaps some might avoid seeking help, expecting the same attitude from others, especially caring professionals. How many have already been lost?

Thank y'all for reading this, and perhaps someone who's edits to the page are trusted enough to avoid any flaming or editing wars will have the compassion to set the article right, as it does have some major issues. Terry Yager (talk) /.02 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.231.201.78 (talk) 02:45, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

The unsigned comment above was posted by Terry Yager. Terry Yager (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:04, 21 December 2011 (UTC).

 Changes made, feel free to butcher at will...

Terry Yager (talk)

Pun intended, BTW. :-) So, where are phantom limbs on here? I guess it coudl be argued since it's neurons that think they should be feeling something perhaps it doesn't come from the same part of the brain so it can't be a hallucination, but I thought for sure it'd be here.99.109.51.52 (talk) 22:20, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Reviewer: Jmh649 (talk · contribs) 17:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Hallucination/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.