Our imagination can affect the way we experience the "real" world much more than we suspect, according to recent research from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Although we tend to consider the things we imagine and the things we perceive as clearly dissociable, the truth is that " the imagination of a sound or a shape changes the way we perceive the world around us in the same way as when we actually hear it or we see, "explains neuroscientist Christopher Berger, lead author of the study published in the journal Current Biology . In other words, "what we imagine hearing can change what we really see, and what we imagine seeing can change what we hear," he points out.
In his experiments with 96 healthy volunteers, he analyzed the illusions that appear when sensory information from one sense changes or distorts the perception of another . Thus, in one of the experiments, the participants had the illusion that two objects crossed to the center of the image and collided when simultaneously emitting a sound typical of a collision. However, when the image was viewed without sound stimulus, the subjects perceived that the objects were moving apart.
The results of the study may be useful in understanding the mechanisms that, in some diseases such as schizophrenia, prevent the brain from distinguishing between thought and reality. Furthermore, the authors suggest that the imagination of paralyzed people could be used to control virtual devices.
