10 Minutes of Eye Contact Can Lead to Hallucinations & Strange Sightings – Study

New research suggested that maintaining eye contact with another person for 10 minutes may cause hallucinations. The findings of the study was published in the journal Psychiatry Research.

Giovanni Caputo, a vision scientist from the University of Urbino in Italy observed two groups of young adults. Each group consisted of 20 people and were placed in dimly lit rooms. The first group was asked to stare at a blank wall for 10 minutes, while the second group was paired of and asked to stare into each other’s eyes for 10 minutes. After the time expired, the participants were asked to report their experiences through several questions.

CNET reported that the people in the group who were asked to stare into each other’s eyes reported that they experienced more dissociation compared to the group that were asked to look at a wall. Dissociation is a psychological term described as people losing their normal connection with reality. During the study, the dissociation of the group was expressed in sounds seeming louder or quieter than usual, reduced color intensity, time seeming to go slower and being spaced out.

The group required to stare at each other were also asked to report on the experience of their partners’ faces.

Using the strange-face questionnaire, 90 percent agreed that they saw some deformed facial traits. 75 percent reported that they saw a monster. 50 percent said that they features of their own face on their partner’s face. 15 percent reported that they saw a face of a relative. Caputo theorized that the hallucinations are a type of rebound effect that may be triggered when the group snaps back to reality after spacing out.

"Strange-face apparitions may characterize the rebound to reality from a dissociative state induced by sensory deprivation. These phenomena may explain psychodynamic projections of the subject's unconscious meanings into the other's face,” Caputo wrote in the journal.

The results of the recent study are still preliminary and the theory will require more hard facts before the researchers can confirm anything. He admitted that the eye-staring group scored higher compared to the control group on dissociative states, but the former did not score any of the items above 2.45 on a scale of 5 points. There was also the issue of the wall-staring group having more leeway to look around and shift their focus, compared to the other group who had to maintain their gaze on their partner’s eyes, based on a report by Research Digest.

More updates and details on the relationship of prolonged eye contact and visual changes are expected in the coming months.