Question

Depending on who you talk to, sensory deprivation may be considered a meditation technique, a torture method, or a relaxation treatment. How do you view it? What effects do you think short-term sensory deprivation would have on the brain? What about long-term sensory deprivation?

Answer 1

Sensory Deprivation occurs when a person experience decreased sensory input or an input that is montonous, meaningless and patternless.

Causes for Sensory deprivation

1 Decreased environmental stimuli

eg in people living alone , seperated from their significat others or institutional patients

2 impaired ability to receive stimuli

Eg no vision, taste,smell, hearing

3 impaired ability to process stimuli

Eg Brain damage, stroke, head injury, dementia

Research has shown that short term sensory deprivation may be relaxing by improving memory, improving creativity and improving the overall performance but long term sensory deprivation may be detrimental to the psychological health causing or aggravating hallucinations,delusions, depresesion,apathy, Anxiety etc.

There are examples in medical literature of Charles Bonnet syndrome where patients who had long standing sensory deficits of vision and hearing developed vivid hallucinations of people and voices talking to them culminating in Psychosis.

This occus due to Neuroplasticity of the brain, which means the brain alters its structure in response to the damage and may overload itself in order to compensate for the loss in the long term but not in the short term.