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Posted: 07-11-2009 00:41 Post subject:

Taken from a longer article:

Sensory deprivation, as CIA research and other agency interrogation materials demonstrate, is a remarkably simple concept. It can be inflicted by immobilizing individuals in small, soundproof rooms and fitting them with blacked-out goggles and earmuffs. "The first thing that happens is extraordinary hallucinations akin to mescaline," explained McCoy. "I mean extreme hallucinations" of sight and sound. It is followed, in some cases within just two days, by what McCoy called a "breakdown akin to psychosis."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/07/sensory_deprivation/

Posted: 07-11-2009 02:20 Post subject:

Last year one of the BBC's Horizon episodes covered sensory deprivation and it's effects on the human brain. It was pretty fascinating. A group of volunteers were split in half. Half the volunteers were covered in padding, blind-folded and plugged into headphones which played endless white noise and the other half were kept locked in a totally pitch black room for a week in a bid to try and replicate the conditions that hostages and some prisoners are held in. They were given memory and comprehension tests both before and after the experiment, the point being to demonstrate how such treatment makes humans pretty suggestible and our memories deeply unreliable. IIRC the group that were kept in the dark fared slightly worse than the padded group.

Nobody went mad as such, largely because the programme makers couldn't replicate the anxiety, terror and boredom that genuine hostages/prisoners would feel, but some people started to exhibit decidedly strange behaviour (visual and aural hallucinations in particular). Also, the group that wore the padding had to have it removed after a few hours because, ironically enough, it was causing them pain!

Posted: 07-11-2009 21:59 Post subject:

It's strange how sensory deprivation can be used for relaxation, but also torture. It could be a matter of context, I suppose.