By Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com
22:25 20 Oct 2023, updated 22:28 20 Oct 2023
Scientists have discovered a fascinating phenomenon – the ability to induce phantom voices in people.
In recent psychiatric surveys conducted in Norway, it was found that approximately 5-10 percent of healthy individuals experience hallucinations.
To understand the cause of these hallucinations, a team of scientists in Switzerland conducted a study to investigate the connection between the senses of touch and hearing. They used a finger-like robotic system to determine what triggers auditory hallucinations and the sensation of a presence in the room.
During the experiment, healthy volunteers were instructed to push a button, which would trigger a robotic finger to tap them on their back. The researchers observed that when there was a delay between each button push and the tap, the participants experienced a sense of someone being near them and speaking.
The study involved 48 subjects and found that more individuals reported “vocal false alarms” when unexpected pokes were delivered to their backs.
Hallucinations can take various forms, such as hearing things, seeing faces, animals, or even feeling sensations like bugs crawling on the skin. These experiences are more common than one might think.
In addition to the five traditional senses (taste, smell, vision, hearing, and touch), humans also possess a sixth sense called proprioception, which refers to the body’s awareness. This sixth sense, including the ability to hallucinate, exists on a continuum for all individuals. Certain factors, such as fatigue, can increase the likelihood of hallucinations.
According to a study published in Psychological Medicine, participants were more likely to report hearing a voice when there was no actual voice if they had already experienced a strange sensation of something nearby.
In the experiment, participants were also asked to identify human voices within “pink noise,” which simulates the sound of heartbeats or wind blowing in the room.
The researchers discovered that when a voice recording with background noise was played for a participant, they were more likely to hallucinate voices during subsequent recordings.
Even participants who pushed the button in front of them to trigger the robotic finger reported hearing voices in the absence of delays and actual voices.
The researchers suggest that this could be due to the participants unconsciously attributing the robotic system’s movements to themselves and hearing their own voice.
The study implies that hallucinations may be more common in individuals who struggle to understand their body’s awareness or proprioception, even without any history of neurological disorders or hearing loss.
By exploring how memory is stored in the brain, this investigation may provide insights into the nature of voice and touch hallucinations.
So the next time you feel a presence behind you while running in Central Park or hear more than just the birds singing in the treetops, know that you are experiencing something that many people around the world also encounter.
