Staring into someone ’s oculus for 10 seconds ? Romantic . gaze into someone ’s eye for 10 straight minutes ? Kind of creepy — and , apparently , hallucinogenic .
That ’s what arecent small studyin Italy recover . In the field of study , pairs of people from a group of 20 young , sizable Tennessean were instruct to sit in a dimly lit room and gaze into one another ’s eyes for 10 minute . A unlike mathematical group of 20 participants were asked to stare at a blank wall for 10 minutes .
Afterward — in accession to presumptively being very bored — each of the participant self - describe what the experience was like . Regardless of whether they were face the paries or another soul , all 40 military volunteer said they have symptoms of dissociation , such as feeling less connected to realism , perceive changes in sound and gloss percept , and having the sense that prison term was dragging . This is reproducible with early studies [ PDF ] that essay the effects of staring at a single point for a comparatively long reaching of clock time .
But more curiously , 90 per centum of those who were require in staring at another someone reported witnessing hallucination in which their partner ’s look became distort to resemble a giant , their own face , or the font of someone they acknowledge . Most citizenry reported that over the class of the 10 - minute experiment , they experienced two to four decided hallucination .
In apress release , Dr. Giovanni Caputo , the lead author , excuse the phenomenon might go on as " the brain snaps back to reality after zoning out and the judgement projects subconscious mentation onto the face of the other mortal . "
Dr. David Spiegel , a Stanford psychologist who was not directly involved in the bailiwick but has explore dissociation , explained to theHuffington Post , " Some of this might have to do with the interpersonal intensity of gazing directly at another person . We interrelate to others in part by imagining ourselves in them . "
