Essay on Hallucinations and the Human Consciousness

B. Hallucinations, are perceived through one of the senses and do not correspond to any stimulus in the outside world. Hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious mind.

The cognitive explanation acknowledges the role of biological factors in schizophrenia, suggesting that the basis of the condition is abnormal brain activity producing visual and auditory hallucinations. Further features of the disorder emerge as people try to make sense of the hallucinations.

When the brain is deprived of all sensory input it begins to provide input of its own, sometimes relating to events that have occurred before. Sometimes these hallucinations occur with no reasoning whatsoever, all the researchers

I am going to be talking about the different drugs that make a human hallucinate. I will describe what the drugs are, what they do to the human brain, and what they can do to the human body. Hallucinogens are drugs that cause false sensory messages and alter the perception of reality. Some of the most popular hallucinogens are LSD, PCP, and MDMA. I will also be talking about the pros and cons of each drug. In this essay, I will talk about if each of the different drugs are legal or illegal and I will explain if I want to keep them legal or illegal.

Schizophrenia is a debilitating disorder, which can affect a person's life on a daily basis because it impairs their cognitive functions. The onset of schizophrenia starts between the ages of "10 and 25 years for men and between 25 and 35 for women" (Rajji et al, 2009, p.286). The symptoms associated with the disorder are confused thinking, delusions, language, and hallucinations. These main symptoms branch off into other areas. For example, hallucinations can branch off into, smells, tastes, what they see, how they feel and auditory. This essay will look at the effects of auditory hallucinations, with the focus on command hallucination (CH). How the command hallucinations can lead the subject to commit violent crimes or even lead

Intense hallucinations and paranoia can make you lash out violently at other people. Just as a bad, those same hallucinations can make you harm

A hallucination, by definition, is a non-existent stimulus that is perceived as real. In most cases, a schizophrenic hears voices. But they can also have visual hallucinations where they see a person or object that is non-existent. In the cases that do involve voices, the patient may hear the voices interact with them in ways such as: the

The term ‘hallucination’ is difficult to define. There is a fine line between a ‘hallucination’ and an ‘illusion’. A hallucination differs from an illusion in that illusions are a product of misinterpretations of external stimuli whereas hallucinations need no such requirement making them an entirely internal process. A true hallucination can also be distinguished from a pseudo-hallucination in which the individual can recognise that what they’re seeing or hearing is not real. Hallucinations are also different from voluntary mental imagery, in that the thought has not uncontrollably forced itself onto our minds. Slade and Bentall (1988, cited in Blackmore, 2010)

The cruel disease of schizophrenia effects 1.1% of the world’s population over the age of 18. (Treatment Advocacy Center.) That’s as many as 51 million people at any one time suffering from this life threatening disease. Schizophrenia is a serious mental condition that alters thoughts, feelings, and the actions of the victim. Symptoms of this disease include positive symptoms (disturbances added to everyday life) and negative symptoms (Capabilities lost in everyday life). The most common positive symptom is hallucinations, this is the act of seeing, hearing, feeling or even tasting and smelling something that doesn’t actually exist. The most prevailing form of a hallucination in schizophrenic patients is hearing imaginary

These strange symptoms could be explained by the Charles Bonnet syndrome. The syndrome is most usually caused by people having damage done somewhere in their visual pathway causing them to experience these hallucinations. Later in the chapter, blind spots in our visual field are explained more fully. With diagrams to test those blind spots, and the explaining of tests and scientific studies conducted to further our knowledge on blind spots. At the end of the chapter the blind spots investigations are tied to James Thurber by questioning if the brain’s capacity for “filling in” blind spots and scotomas can also help us understand the extraordinary visual hallucinations people with Charles Bonnet syndrome experience.

Cognitive theories were dominant for understanding and treating auditory hallucinations (Pilling et al., 2002). Some contemporary cognitive theories proposed that hallucinations are the result of misattributions of internal events to external sources (Garety et al., 2001; Bentall, 1990). Auditory hallucinations are internal verbal speech or thoughts that are perceived by the individual as occurring externally, according to those cognitive theories. Findings by Preston and Green (1981) support these misattribution theories by showing an association between auditory hallucinations and sub-vocalisation.

These hallucinations are experienced identically to normal seeing, however they are distinguishable from reality because of their content and the fact that they often appear in clearer and greater detail than Charles Bonnet patients (whose visions have been impaired or lost) would naturally see (3). These "release" hallucinations are often not reported to doctors and psychologists because the individuals experiencing them are aware that what they are seeing are hallucinations and are afraid of being judged as crazy by those people that they might tell (5).

Hallucinations can be auditory. The types of auditory hallucinations that people experience vary. Some people can hear mean voices one telling them to do something wrong and the other telling them not too. Auditory hallucination can be like a radio talk show so you are hearing the voice, but not an actual participant in what you are hearing. Another auditory hallucination that is very common is hearing music and it can be any kind of music. People that experience these types of hallucinations are normal people like you and me. There are many theories as to why people experience auditory hallucinations such as a greater activation in the primary auditory cortex, or some think it because we can’t recognize the auditory hallucination as our own.

Multiple regression analysis was run to predict hallucination history from metacognition variables; perception and memory. The model statistically significantly predicted hallucination history, F(2, 177) = 11.88, p < .000, adj. R2 = 10.8%. All variables added statistically significantly to the prediction, p < .05

Auditory hallucinations are false perceptions of sounds that occur in the form of internal noises or voices in the second and third person. They are most common in individuals with psychosis, specifically schizophrenia, but are also featured in a minority of people that do not have a mental illness. Auditory hallucinations have been known to cause distress in patients that have not found ways to cope with the voices in their head. Internal voices may give the individual a negative or a positive association; most individuals with schizophrenia tend to have negative experiences. As defined by Christos Ballos in an article in the New York Times, schizophrenia is a disorder that is distinguished by the disruptions in communication, behavior, and perception and causes individuals to have decreased interpersonal relationships and occupational abilities (Ballos). How do auditory hallucinations impede the day-to-day functions of a schizophrenic? What types of treatment are used for patients that undergo distress from the hallucinations? More specifically, what type of therapy, in addition to medications, is effective in dealing with auditory hallucinations and schizophrenia?