What is actually happening to your brain when you experience hallucinations?
In: Biology
Seeing something that *is* real requires light reflected from the object to hit your eyes, be turned into a signal, and be interpreted by one part of your brain. To recall what that object is requires interaction with another part of your brain that deals with memory. To deduce what an unknown object is requires more interaction with the part of your brain that deals with reasoning.
So for seeing reality there is physical light, a sensory organ, transmission of signals, and different parts of your brain involved in processing the signals and perceiving (recalling and reasoning).
When you’re hallucinating you’re not seeing reality, you’re imagining seeing something or misinterpreting what you see. And as far as I understand it, that means there is some ‘error’ in the processing and perception going on in the brain. But I don’t know enough to explain it better than that.
But I can say there are different kinds of hallucinations that must come from different kinds of errors perhaps happening in different parts of the brain and maybe combined with different functioning of the eyes.
E.g if I take some LSD and I see the walls moving it can be related to my eyes not holding focus on the wallpaper or tile pattern (because my pupils are too dilated) and some parts of my brain misinterpreting what’s happening as movement. That’s more like an illusion than a hallucination. The same goes for seeing faces, that’s probably [pareidolia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia) (which is always ‘working’) going into overdrive because the drug is affecting whatever parts of my brain deal with that.
But if I have a schizophrenic hallucination and I see spiders that aren’t there that isn’t a fault of my eyes or my perception of what I’m seeing, it must be a pure creation of my brain. Something like the part of my brain that creates images in dreams is ‘switched on’ when it shouldn’t be.
That’s not the best technical answer but maybe it’s enough to start a discussion.
I was up for three days with some friends and when i went home on the third morning and got home i turned around wheb i got to the stairs and saw a man that was comibg up behind me with these slightly evil eyes and a grin on his lips. I literally said “WHAT the fuck” and im swedish and then there was just nothing there. I guess i was in some sort of limbo mode where my brain was shutting down even though i was awake and was just about to unlock my door.
Whats your thoughts on this, bro?
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