Our power to perceive the cosmos around us depends on function sensory cells sending data to our brains . instance by how a blind person from birth wonder what a sighted someone sees , or a deaf person genus Mus about what hearing people discover , our constructed realism is circumscribe by what types of sensorial input we ’re used to .
All of this goes out the window , however , when human take hallucinogenic drugs .
Mescaline , psilocin mushrooms , and LSD , in particular , are knownto induce a temporary sensory crossover , known asacquired synesthesia , wherein the tripper simultaneously experiences heightened phenomena in more than one centripetal nerve pathway . Most commonly , users have freaky overlaps in audio - ocular perception – for example , a strain toy on the radio “ sounds ” like purple – though examples of taste and smell joining the psychedelic party have also been report in scientific lit .
But until now , one unique situation had never been investigated : How would a blind person hallucinate on drugs nearly assort with visual disturbances ? Thanks to an amazingly entertaining guinea pig study by University of Bath psychologists , bring out inConsciousness and Cognition , we now have a small insight .
Their report is found on the experience of a 70 - year - old male , referred to as Mr Blue Pentagon ( BP ) , who was blind from birth . A adult male of the times , BP took a caboodle of drugs during his heyday as a rock instrumentalist in the 1970s and early 1980s .
Throughout his many trips , BP experienced temporarysynesthesia , temporary passing of his ability to talk or sympathize language , and distortions of clip perception , yet he never shape any genial images .
“ Every metre I did pane , I experienced something new and striking , ” he recounted to the researchers . “ plain through the senses which are uncommitted to me ! I never had any visual paradigm come to me . I ca n’t see or imagine what light or dark might look like . ”
When identify his most potent ill-tempered - sensorial experience , BP call back how listening to Bach ’s third Brandenburg concerto made him feel like he “ was immersed in the most beautiful waterfall ever . ”
He continued : “ I could hear violins play in my soul and found myself having a one - hour farseeing soliloquy using different tone of voices . I call up they sounded extremely unparalleled ! "
" LSD open everything ' summit ' . The sounds come from Song dynasty I would normally heed to became three dimensional , abstruse and retard . ”
According to the researcher , BP ’s perception of euphony having physicality while on LSD mirror findings of study on sensory - substitution devices such as the BrainPort , which converts photographic camera images into a formula of easy electric impulses delivered to the tongue . Using these platforms , unreasoning individuals can train their brains to interpret optical input using a functioning sense , yet in reality , the result experience represent an entirely unique sentiency .
“ They did not have a mental lexicon to describe what a new sensory modality would be , and so could only draw it in condition of what it was like through their existing gage . BP likewise could only make reference to the non - auditory expression of the musical experience by describing it in tactile terminal figure , ” the team wrote .
[ H / T : PsyPost ]
