Early studies on sensory deprivation date back to the 1950s, although secret research may have existed before that date. The first experiments with volunteers were conducted at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
In its most basic concept, sensory deprivation has to do with the partial or total restriction of stimuli, applied to one or more senses, preventing sight, hearing, touch or all at once, such practices have been used for therapeutic research and as a method of torture.
Unfortunately, it is the latter use that has aroused interest in sensory deprivation.
After World War II, they began to say that prisoners could confess without being beaten, enough to deprive your senses of the stimuli of the environment, and your will has changed radically.
“There are five paths to the brain, only five. Everything a child learns in his or her life learns through these five ways. You can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Everything Leonardo da Vinci learned learned from these five ways” ?. ?Glenn Doman?
In principle, three types of experimental conditions have been used to study sensory deprivation, at least in known studies.
The first is the Bexton, Heron and Scott situation, dated 1954; the second, that of Wexler, Mendelson, Liederman and Solomon, 1958; the third is the Shurley situation, 1960; Let’s see what each one consists of:
The experiments first assessed whether these conditions altered perception processes and concluded that this was the case, and in a very noticeable way.
For the most part, there are many visual disturbances. The volunteer sees static objects move and change in size and shape.
They even see the walls moving and the tables move. There is also greater visual sensitivity, but after several days, stimuli are perceived more slowly. A straight line looks like an “S”. Other hallucinations also occur.
There is also widespread disorientation regarding touch and the perception of time and space. One experiment showed that the effects of social isolation are similar to those of sensory deprivation.
Many volunteers indicated that they wanted to use the experience to reflect on personal issues they had not been able to spend time on.
At first they did, but as the hours went by they became increasingly difficult to concentrate on their thoughts, after a while they could not even count to 30.
Researchers found that the ability to memorize and retain information improved after experiments, while decreased the ability to abstract, generalize, and do mathematical calculations.
Surprisingly, the ability to learn improvement in those who are subjected to sensory deprivation compared to those who do not suffer from this condition.
However, motor skills decrease considerably, especially after 48 hours without receiving stimuli.
Simply put, all these experiments have shown that through sensory deprivation it is possible to induce pseudopsysis states, i. e. temporal psychosis.
Is his name him? Pseudo? Because once the experience is over and the person who resumes their normal life, also regains all their usual functions.
One of the most interesting results was to see that in people called “normal” hallucinations occur during sensory deprivation, in people with schizophrenia these hallucinations tend to disappear.
It has also been shown that each individual’s personality is decisive in the way they experience sensory deprivation.
All volunteers have done their best to adapt to conditions, but most tend to remember the past and sink into depression. Almost everyone becomes much more suggestable, intensifying the deeper effects of psychological torture as well as those of psychological therapy.