When young mischievous people set a cat's mustache on, we call it a nasty prank. When scientists are engaged in such a thing, leaving only one vibrissa to the mouse, this is already science. This is how sensory deprivation is investigated - the disconnection of the brain from the data supplied by the senses.
The mentioned experiment actually took place in 2007 and was carried out within the walls of the laboratory of the American Carnegie Mellon University. As you know, vibrissae (in everyday life - whiskers) are in a number of mammals a sense organ that supplies tactile information. Vibrissae are a very ancient organ, which most likely developed even among the ancestors of mammals - beast carnivores of the Carboniferous period.
The whiskers allow you to "fit" into the dimensions of holes and manholes, react to air vibrations, which may indicate the proximity of prey or a natural enemy. American researchers have deprived the unfortunate mouse of all vibrissae, except one, and observed how this would affect the brain activity of the rodent.
It turned out that, having lost an important source of sensory information in its entirety, the animal compensated for the loss by a sharp increase in brain activity. Now, not only a standard set of neurons, but also new groups of nerve cells were turned on to process information from a single antennae.
For those in the tank
Actually, nature puts similar, sometimes very cruel experiments on a regular basis with the same similar result: blind people learn to extract much more information than an ordinary person, from tactile sensations, hearing or smell, those who have lost an arm gain incredible dexterity in the fingers of the remaining unharmed hand - there are many examples. All the more strange is the idea of turning off all the senses altogether, leaving the brain alone with itself. That is, to achieve maximum sensory deprivation.
Nevertheless, a little over half a century ago, such an idea seemed very promising from the point of view of science, and research on complete sensory deprivation, or "isolation of perception" (perceptual isolation), left a deep mark, not only in science and medicine, but also in pop culture, as well as in the recreational industry and mystical teachings.
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It all started with attempts to answer a very important question for understanding the human psyche: how much does the brain function depends on a constant flow of sensory data? And what will happen to the human "I" if the sensations stop at once? Will it go to sleep? Will it fade away? To find the answer, scientists began to figure out how to turn off a person's maximum sensations. The first experiences were reminiscent of medieval torture. The subject was placed on a couch, the body and limbs were surrounded by barriers limiting their mobility, and a U-shaped pillow was placed under the head for the same purpose. They put on an opaque blindfold over their eyes, turned off the lights in the room and made complete silence.
Tank respirator
Tank respirator, or "iron lungs". Now in medicine, artificial respiration systems with positive pressure prevail.
The device that has provided such a valuable service to sensory deprivation researchers has a long history. For the first time the principle of compulsory ventilation of lungs with negative pressure was described by the Scottish physician John Dalziel in 1832, and the first practical example of "iron lungs" was presented to the world in 1928 by the Americans Philip Drinker and Louis Shaw. The human body (with the exception of the head) was placed in a sealed volume, where a negative pressure was created using an electric pump. As a result of this action, the chest rose, the lungs expanded and sucked in atmospheric air through the larynx.
One of the most unusual devices that have been used in experiments to partially isolate the brain from sensory information is the so-called boxed, or tank, respirators. These devices are not at all like the lightweight masks that we wear to protect the airways from dust, and belong to stationary medical equipment. One of the severe consequences of polio is paralysis of the muscles that provide breathing.
In this case, the patient is placed in a cylindrical chamber (this is a box respirator) during recovery, where a gas medium with variable pressure is maintained. Fluctuations in gas pressure move the chest and respiratory system without the help of muscles. In this case, the patient's head remains outside the chamber in order to have access to atmospheric air.
Being in this position for hours, the patient (or the subject) remained virtually motionless, while his brain did not receive tactile information. It is obvious that being inside a tank respirator is also very painful for a person, but the very idea of placing a person in a certain tank (in English “tank” - hence the “tank” in the name of the device) became a clue for the next step.
Twentieth century eccentric
Among those who worked on the then fashionable topic of sensory deprivation in the 1950s, the most prominent figure was the American physician John Lilly (1915-2001).
This lean, bespectacled man with the face of a mad scientist lived a long life, in which there was a place for science, mysticism, literature, and drugs. Lilly was also interested in finding extraterrestrial civilizations and in general all the unusual.
A certified physicist, biologist and medic, Lilly in the first half of his life was not seen in anything eccentric. During World War II, for example, he studied the effect of high-altitude flights on human physiology, which was very useful on the eve of the supersonic and space era. After the war, Lilly took up the problems of the physical basis of thinking and consciousness, and even published a work in which he described a method for displaying on a cathode-ray tube a graph of the electrical activity of parts of the brain in which electrodes were implanted.
From these studies it was already a stone's throw to the research of sensory deprivation, where Lilly made a small revolution and invented his "flotation tank". Lilly's other famous idea was the intellectual equality of humans and cetaceans. It remained only to find a common language for them, for which the doctor developed a special room like living rooms filled with water, where people could live next to dolphins and learn each other's language. Lilly described his experiences with LSD, dolphins, and immersion into "senselessness" in several books popular among adherents of the new age culture.
Turning into nothing
American doctor John Lilly figured out how to disconnect the brain from sensory information to the maximum, up to 90% of its total volume. For this, he built a tank with light and soundproof walls and a tightly sealed hatch. Inside, the tank was filled with water at the temperature of a human body. The subject who found himself inside such a tank did not see anything, did not hear, did not feel either cold or warmth, and while swimming in the water, did not even feel the attraction of Mother Earth. There was only one problem: the person did not have gills, and to breathe in the water, the subject had to put on a mask, where air was supplied for breathing.
Anyone who has ever diving or at least snorkeling has already realized that the mask tightening the head and face could not but be a serious irritant - and this, of course, affected the purity of the experiment. Later, Lilly improved the design. Instead of water, a 30% solution of magnesium sulfate heptahydrate was poured into the tank - a substance better known to us as Epsom salt. The dense solution did not allow the body to sink, and the person could lie quietly on his back, inhaling ordinary atmospheric air and, as it were, hovering in a dark and soundless space.
John Lilly's "flotation tank" that cuts off up to 90% of information from the senses
Research on sensory deprivation has provided a lot of food for thought and led to diverse, sometimes conflicting and unexpected conclusions. For example, subjects were found to be able to tolerate movement restriction on an equipped couch or in a tank respirator much longer (despite the fact that sensory isolation was incomplete) than a much more comfortable immersion for the body in John Lilly's "flotation tank". It became apparent that the more sensory information is cut off from the brain and the longer this cut-off lasts, the harder the brain itself reacts to it.
A special place among the phenomena of isolation was occupied by all kinds of visions and hallucinations - obviously, as part of an alternative reality, which was being built by the deprived of information consciousness. Quite vivid hallucinations were noted even in those who were motionless in a tank respirator. There are known examples when a person, imprisoned in this cylindrical chamber, suddenly felt that he was flying around the clinic in a helicopter or riding a car. Moreover, both the helicopter and the car had the shape of a tank respirator.
A bouquet of experiences
What phenomena accompanied sensory deprivation in the subjects?
Throwing and dreaming
Perhaps one of the most unexpected and at the same time destructive effects of isolation was the loss of clarity of thought and the inability to focus on anything in particular. Thought begins to rush, and, moreover, in the absence, as the leader of the world proletariat would say, “the reality given to us in sensations,” human consciousness begins to produce an alternative reality. Many subjects noted that during the sessions (especially those associated with immersion in water) they were pursued by dreams and fantasies, most often of a sexual nature, and sometimes embodying certain aggressive thoughts.
Thundering heart
The effect of temporary disorientation may seem quite natural - people tended to exaggerate the amount of time spent in isolation. Some experienced strange bodily sensations bordering on illusion. It seemed to them that the body was moving somewhere or changing shape, for example, swelling. At times, the participants in the experiments developed panic, fear of the invisible presence of something unkind. A separate interesting point is the fixation of consciousness on the residual information supplied by the senses.
This is the sound of your own voice, the beating of your heart, the hissing of air bubbles in the water - the starving consciousness perceived these grains of sensory information especially greedily. And of course, a special place among the mental phenomena of isolation is occupied by all kinds of auditory and visual hallucinations, and visual hallucinations can have the character of both spontaneous luminescence and flashes, and various mystical visions.
Prisoner Cinema
The hallucinogenic properties of sensory deprivation have been confirmed by comparatively recent studies carried out in an anechoic chamber in Stephen Orfield's laboratory located in the American city of Minneapolis. The local anechoic chamber (usually such chambers are used to test samples of acoustic equipment), listed in the Guinness Book of Records as "the quietest place on Earth", was used for experiments, during which it was found that absolute silence is unbearable for a person and disorientates the brain. Even when we are somewhere in nature or in the quiet of a summer cottage, “white noise” (a mixture of sounds of different heights and nature), which is different from the zero threshold, presses on our ears.
In Orfield's anechoic chamber, protected from the sounds of the world by meter-thick concrete walls and special embossed fiberglass cladding of these walls, the noise level is 9.4 dB. After a few minutes of being in such an environment, a person begins to drive crazy with the beating of his own heart, the sounds of the stomach and lungs, and then hallucinations appear, which can be visual, auditory or olfactory. Even NASA astronauts were subjected to tests in Orfield's chamber, since a situation of dead silence (in outer space) may well meet them, and how, in this case, to separate reality from hallucination?
Working in space is just one case when the phenomena accompanying sensory deprivation can occur in real life, and not on an experimental site. Polar explorers, solo travelers and … prisoners in solitary confinement experienced similar feelings. In the latter case, the problem is very acute, and human rights defenders defending the humanization of the penitentiary system are in favor of reducing or eliminating the practice of solitary confinement, as having a destructive effect on the psyche of a sentenced person.
There is even a well-established term - "prisoner's cinema", denoting the visions that sometimes arise among the inhabitants of solitary confinement in the conditions of the twilight of the cell, lack of communication and auditory information, with limited movement in space. This "movie" is, as a rule, a kind of game of glowing colored spots and flashes.
Hallucinations are a hindrance in the work of an astronaut and are unlikely to greatly please a lone prisoner, but they are appreciated by lovers of "spiritual self-knowledge." In the 1950s and 1960s, it was in vogue in the West to try to penetrate the secrets of consciousness with the help of psychoactive substances such as LSD, which were not yet banned at that time. Realizing that the "flotation tank" and the phenomena of isolation can cause hallucinations, that is, they have a partly narcotic effect, John Lilly began to use immersion in the tank in order to receive mystical revelations and achieve visions in the spirit of the "near-death experience" (meaning hallucinations of people who survived clinical death). Sometimes diving was combined with LSD.
Experiments with chemical drugs (Lilly tried to "treat" them even to dolphins - he wanted to establish intellectual contact with them) put the doctor in a row of "hippie" gurus like Timothy Leary and authorities among all sorts of mystics and heralds of the "new age". However, he was no longer perceived as a serious scientist, he was deprived of federal funding, and Dr. Lilly lived out his life as a kind of eccentric type, immersed in drug mysticism.
However, Lilly's main brainchild has successfully outlived its creator. The fact is that John saw his "flotation tank" not only as a source of spiritual revelation, but also as a tool for psychotherapy. He created a technique called REST (an abbreviation for "simulated confined environment"), in which short-term immersions in a dark tank of Epsom salts were used to normalize blood pressure, relax and relieve stress, as well as various kinds of meditation exercises.
Which, in general, is logical: who of us did not have a desire to hide from all external stimuli at once for a while? That is why Lilly's tanks have found their place in spas and even special "flotation clubs", where anyone can provide themselves with a "complete blackout" for 15 minutes.