Pseudoperceptions: what are they and why do you experience them?

Pseudoperceptions are common and mostly non-pathological phenomena that many of us have experienced at some point. An example of this is the classic image that suddenly appears in our minds when we fall asleep and that soon causes us to startle. Pareidolias – or attributing to a specific stimulus such as a leaf, the shape of a face that looks at us – are other related facts.

It should be noted that beyond the anecdotal or even the ironic nature of these situations, they always raise some concern. They are still an alteration of reality and a specific way of making contact with the strange, the unusual and even the paradoxical. That is why the scenario where pseudoperceptions impact – and disturb – the most is in the dream world.

What are pseudoperceptions?

Elena is a cashier in a supermarket and experiences multiple pseudoperceptions every day. Every time the megaphone rings for someone to go to the checkout to serve customers, she thinks they have called her.. The fact that you suffer this experience does not mean that you have any psychological problem or any auditory hallucination. It’s just a result of everyday pressure and stress.

We could therefore define pseudoperceptions as mental anomalies or errors in the brain’s perception process. These are situations in which the mind conjures up images or even sounds that do not actually exist. It is important to emphasize that they are very common experiences and that, on average, they do not fall within pathology (such as the hallucination that a patient with schizophrenia can experience).

Dr. Humberto Maturana, the famous Chilean biologist, said that the brain is constantly interpreting reality to give meaning to everything. Sometimes, it is normal to make mistakes and errors in the way we process each stimulus or situation. This causes us to experience different types of pseudoperceptions throughout our lives, and although they disconcert us, many of them are completely normal.

How many types of errors in perception can the brain suffer?

We were talking at the beginning about pareidolias. This is perhaps one of the most common pseudoperceptions. Attributing a human face to a stone is very common. Looking at the craters on the Moon and believing we see a face printed on it is another fairly recurring phenomenon. Science has studied this phenomenon and offers us a simple explanation for it.

Research works such as those carried out at the University of Sydney (Australia) affirm that animals also experience pseudoperceptions. For example, Rhesus monkeys suffer from pareidolias like us. And this effect is nothing more than a natural tendency of the brain to look for “faces” wherever it looks.

The mind will always detect a face before an inanimate object and sometimes errors in perception appear, both in humans and primates. However, it is common to suffer from other types of pseudoperceptions. They are the following:

The phenomenon of consecutive images

Let’s imagine that we are looking at a book with photos of birds. We are turning the pages one after another and suddenly, our cell phone rings. When we pick it up, we think we see a bird suddenly passing before us. Is it really there? Obviously not, it is just a false perception and an error of our brain.

The phenomenon of consecutive images arises after being exposed to a series of specific stimuli over time.

The experience of ghosting

The experience of ghosting arises as a result of physical and mental exhaustion. Let’s imagine that we have been at an airport all day waiting for our delayed flight. Later, when night comes and we go to bed, when we close our eyes the image of that airport may suddenly come to mind.

Pseudoperceptions: memory images

Talking about memory images is going deeper into the way the brain constructs its memories. In this case, a common phenomenon is to completely transform the image of a memory – for example that date we had a year ago with a specific person – and not knowing if what we remember was really like that or our mind has distorted it.

Hypnagogic perceptions

One of the most common types of pseudoperceptions are hypnagogic ones. These are very vivid perceptual experiences that appear right between wakefulness and sleep. These phenomena can interrupt our rest and make us wake up suddenly when we suffer a visual, tactile and auditory phenomenon of great impact.

Now, the most complex thing about this experience is that it usually appears in parasomnias such as sleep paralysis. The person perceives this hallucination and is unable to react, experiencing it as something very disturbing.

To conclude, as we can see, all these realities are still specific events that most of us have experienced at some point and for which we do not know how to give an explanation. Pseudoperceptions are yet another example of the complexity of the human brain. and those small errors in perception that can be experienced occasionally.

You might be interested…