The human body is an amazing combination of many organs, tissues, functions, chemical reactions, electrical impulses that allow a person to live, learn and learn about the world around him. Cognition occurs with the help of influences on the human senses - light, sound, taste, smell, tactile and spatial perceptions. All this is the basis of knowledge and existence of a person in the world around him. And perceptual disturbances, whatever they are and for whatever reasons, are a serious problem.
Perception: reality plus imagination
The sense organs and imagination are involved in the fact that a person can perceive the world around him. Those knowledge that is obtained with the help of vision, hearing, taste, tactile impact, smell and determination of the position of the body in space, are processed by special parts of the brain and, with the help of imagination and previous experience, become ideas about the world around. Perceptual disorders in any area do not allow a person to get a complete picture.
Far and close
Disorders of sensation andperceptions of the received data are closely interconnected. Receptors that receive information about the surrounding reality transmit nerve impulses to the brain, where the analysis and processing of the information received takes place and a response occurs in the form of an idea of an object or phenomenon that affects the receptors. Moreover, some of the receptors should receive such an impact during direct contact with the object, and some - through space. So, for example, taste sensations arise when food enters the oral cavity and on the tongue. But vision allows you to see objects at a distance. The perception of the received information through various sense organs and receptors is the main mechanism of human cognition of the world. Perceptual disorders are a complex physiological and psychological problem.
Sense organs and receptors
In addition to the six sense organs known from school, the human body perceives much more stimuli. So, there are receptors responsible for the perception of heat - cold, pain, as well as the sensations of your body. So science distinguishes not six, but 9 types of sensations:
- vision;
- rumor;
- smell;
- touch;
- equibrioception - a sense of balance;
- taste;
- nociception - the perception of pain;
- thermoception - feeling of warmth;
- proprioception - the spatial sensation of your body.
Receiving information about the world around us with the help of various receptors, the brain processes them into perceptions of the environmentreality.
Perceptions and medical practice
If any disturbances occur in the human body, a big problem may arise - perception disorders. Psychiatry, as a scientific and practical field of medicine, studies these disorders and, to the extent possible, helps to correct them. Psychiatrists have been studying perceptual disorders for centuries, helping not only the patients themselves, but also the people around them, to live with such problems. Violations of the work of one or more sense organs are not always disorders of a complex analysis of the surrounding world. A person who has lost his sight knows how objects and colors look in reality, and with the help of the work of other senses, he can present a real picture of the world around him. In psychiatry, disorders of the perception process are a whole complex of disorders caused not so much by problems in the functioning of receptors, but by changes in the processes of processing the information received and obtaining the final result.
How do perceptual disorders manifest?
The field of psychiatry is a special field of medicine that studies various mental disorders and their manifestations. This is a very specific area of human knowledge, which operates with the concepts of "disease", "he alth", "norm" and "pathology" in relation to the mental state. One of the areas of work of a psychiatrist is perceptual disorders. Psychiatry similar problemsconsidered mental illness. Disorders of sensation and perception are manifested by several conditions:
- Anesthesia is manifested by the inability to perceive tactile sensations, taste and smell. In its manifestations, it is similar to medical anesthesia, caused to desensitize pain receptors in patients during medical interventions.
- Hyperesthesia - a disorder of sensitivity caused by an apparent increase in smell, light, sound. Very often, hyperesthesia manifests itself in patients who have suffered a traumatic brain injury.
- Hypothesia - the opposite of hyperesthesia is a change in sensitivity. Sensory perception reduces natural stimuli. Patients with depressive disorders suffer from hypoesthesia, for whom the world seems dull, boring.
- Paresthesias are expressed in sensations of itching, burning, tingling, "goosebumps" caused by impaired blood supply and innervation. Often, paresthesias occur in the Zakharyin-Ged zones: problems of internal organs manifest themselves in the form of unpleasant, painful sensations in certain areas of the surface of the human body.
- Senesthopathies are unpleasant sensations that occur inside the human body, they are difficult to describe in words, most often the patient uses vivid comparative images to talk about these sensations.
"Wrong" feelings sometimes coincide with the clinical manifestations of any disease, and not only from psychiatric practice. A competent diagnosis of a disease or condition is the basis of quality treatment.
Main Perceptual Disorders
Psychiatry as a field of clinical medicine operates with the concepts of methodology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention. To make a diagnosis, it is necessary to clearly know the manifestations of the disease, this is helped by clinical tests, history taking, laboratory and instrumental studies. Categorical judgments allow correctly interpreting the data obtained in order to make an adequate diagnosis. To refer to certain mental he alth problems in psychiatry, there are two main categories of perceptual disorder:
- illusions;
- hallucinations.
Both concepts cause quite negative feelings in most people, but the patient himself has no power over them, although in many cases such disorders occur due to conditions that a person drives himself into, for example, drug or alcohol poisoning. Some types of perceptual disorders can occur in perfectly he althy people in terms of psychiatry.
Blue Caterpillar from Wonderland
"What you see, but what is not really" - that's it, a hallucination. Problems in the perception of reality as it really is are manifested by the appearance of pseudo-real images. Psychiatry, studying disorders of perception, defines hallucinations as an image that has appeared in the mind and is defined as a real one, but without an external stimulus that affects human receptors. These images appear from scratch, so to speak, because ofperception disorders. Hallucinations by psychiatrists are divided into several varieties:
- True hallucinations - are vivid images, for the patient having certain shapes, color, smell, emitting specific sounds. True hallucinations are perceived by the patient as a manifestation of reality through his senses, he tries to manipulate them, as if the phenomena or objects he sees exist in reality. In addition, according to the patient experiencing true hallucinations, all the people around him should perceive them in the same way as he does.
- Pseudo-hallucinations are perceived by the patient as something unnatural, but really existing, it is devoid of brightness, often incorporeal, it can occur either from the body of the patient himself, or from areas that are not subject to his receptors. Often, false hallucinations are considered by the patient to be forcibly inserted into his body with the help of special devices, apparatus, machines, or because of the mental impact exerted on him.
In addition to these two types of hallucinations, they are also divided according to the sense organs with which they can be caused:
- visceral;
- flavored;
- visual;
- olfactory;
- auditory;
- tactile.
Each such type of hallucination has its own scientific definition and can be decomposed into several subtypes, which is important for clinical psychiatry.
By the way, hallucinations can be suggested and caused. One of the methods of psychiatry uses the Aschaffenburg symptom, when the patient is allowed to listen in advancedisconnected phone, thus testing his readiness for auditory hallucinations. Or the symptom of Reichardt is a symptom of a blank slate: the patient is given a completely white sheet of paper and is invited to talk about what is depicted on it. Hallucinations can also be functional, arising against the background of irritation of certain receptors and disappearing after the removal of the stimulus. By the way, the image of the Blue Caterpillar smoking a hookah on a mushroom cap from Lewis Carroll's fairy tale "Alice in Wonderland" is regarded by many as a classic hallucination.
Such a beautiful illusion
In psychiatry, another type of perceptual disorder stands out - illusions. Everyone is familiar with this concept, even those who do not suffer from psychiatric perception disorders. People often use the expression "beautiful illusion, terrible illusion". So what is it? The scientific definition of one type of perceptual disorder sounds like an incorrect, erroneous perception of objects that exist in reality. Deception of the senses - that's what an illusion is. For example, an illusion can occur when the level of stimulus is insufficient - in the dark it is very easy to mistake the outline of a bush for a human figure. So the emergence of illusions is not always the area of psychiatry. The hallmarks of an illusion are:
- object or phenomenon subject to sensory distortion: figure, voice, tactile or spatial sensation;
- distortion, misperception and evaluation of a real object;
- illusion is based on sensory perception, that is, a person's receptors are actually affected, but it is perceived a little differently than it actually is;
- feeling the false as real.
Visual perception disorder is one of the frequent illusions of he althy people. Moreover, such an error can be physical or physiological in nature. The physical nature of illusions has nothing to do with psychiatry; the same mirage in the desert has a rationale, albeit not too simple, but proven by the exact science of physics. Clinical psychiatry deals with psychopathological delusions:
- affective, arising against the background of fear or nervous excitability about imminent danger;
- verbal, i.e. verbal, illusions - individual words or phrases that are heard by a person;
- pareidolic illusions - visual illusions that arise against the background of a real image by conjecturing images, for example, a drawing on a wallpaper can become an illusion of the frightening content of a picture; most often such illusions are observed in creative personalities, for example, scientists have found that Leonardo da Vinci suffered from pareidolia.
The basis of illusions - disorders of perceptions and ideas about the world around. They are not always pathological. Often they are caused by a distortion of perception against the background of an incorrect assessment of the work of receptors.
Thinking and memory in perceptual disorders
What distinguishes a reasonable person from all other livingcreatures? The ability to think. Thinking is the main cognitive process that combines the world around a person into a logical picture. Thinking is inextricably linked with perception and memory. All the processes that characterize a person as a rational being have changed, developed and transformed for thousands of years. And if for a start it was only necessary to apply physical force in order to satisfy their natural needs (food, reproduction and self-preservation), then over time a person learned to build logical chains - to think in order to get the necessary result with less physical effort and harm to one's he alth and life. To consolidate the favorable result obtained, memory began to develop - short-term, long-term, as well as other mental functions characteristic of people - imagination, the ability to see the future, self-awareness. Symbiosis of disorders of perception and thinking - psychosensory disorders. In psychiatry, these disorders are divided into two main types:
- depersonalization can be manifested both by incorrect sensations of one's body, the so-called mental depersonalization, and distorted concepts of one's own "I" - mental depersonalization;
- derealization is manifested in a distorted perception of the surrounding world - space, time, dimensions, forms of the surrounding reality are perceived by the patient as distorted, although he is absolutely sure that his vision is correct.
Thinking is a feature of a person. Reasonable thinking is subject to refutation with violationsperception. Psychiatry, as a field of clinical medicine, seeks to find ways to resolve the controversy caused by perceptual disturbances in mental patients. With disorders of perception, patients also show a disorder of thinking - nonsense, obsessive or overvalued ideas that become the meaning of the life of such a person.
Psychiatry is a complex science of human mental illness, the area of which are disorders of perception, memory, and thinking, as well as other mental functions. Moreover, any mental he alth problems are most often associated with a whole range of mental functions - from the work of the senses to short-term or long-term memory.
Why is the perception of reality disturbed?
When confronted with psychiatric problems, the question arises: what are the causes of perceptual disorders? There can be a whole complex of them: from alcohol and drug poisoning to a pathological state of the human psyche. Mental illnesses are quite difficult to diagnose, often due to the fact that a person cannot accurately describe his feelings, the events that have happened or are happening to him, and the initial stages of the disease are not always noticeable to others. Perception disorders can develop as a result of any diseases of the internal organs or systems, as well as due to a violation of the processing of the information received, its analysis and obtaining a specific result. Psychiatric practice at the moment cannot absolutely accurately determine the causes of the development of a perceptual disorder, except for intoxications, when the pathology mechanismaccurately determined by the poisonous substance. Disturbances in the perception of reality can and should cause alertness among people around, since often the patients themselves are in no hurry to turn to specialists, not considering these violations to be something pathological. A timely identified problem with the perception of the surrounding reality can help the patient avoid serious problems. Distorted reality is a huge problem both for the patient and for the people around him, both mentally and physically.
Children's fantasies and perceptual disturbances
Child psychiatry and psychology is a special kind of medicine. Children are great dreamers and inventors, and the increased reactivity of the child's psyche and little life experience do not give the child the opportunity to independently correct false sensations in time. That is why perceptual disorders in children are a special area of pedagogy, psychology and psychiatry. Visual and auditory illusions are one of the components of the childhood of every person. A scary tale told at night becomes a real nightmare for the baby, hiding under the bed or in the closet. Most often, such disorders occur in the evening, the child's fatigue and drowsiness affect. Terrible tales and stories, especially told to the baby at night, can become the basis for the development of a neurotic state. Hallucinations occur in children most often against the background of somatic and infectious diseases as a result of an increase in body temperature. Age of most frequent manifestation of such disorders- 5-7 years. Hallucinations of this nature are elementary - sparks, flashes of light, contours or images of people, animals, and from the sounds children hear shouts, knocking, voices of birds or animals. All these visions are perceived by the child as a fairy tale.
Children of different ages can also suffer from manifestations of schizophrenia. In this case, all hallucinations acquire a complex, often sinister character. The plot of hallucinations is complex, often carrying a danger to the he alth or even the life of the baby. For children of older adolescence, and this is 12-14 years old, the development of taste and tactile hallucinations is characteristic, the child begins to refuse previously favorite food, his character and behavior change.
Pediatrics and child psychiatry distinguishes children with congenital disorders of perception into a special group. In these cases, the child grows and learns to compensate for the lack of some sensations by enhancing the development of other sensory abilities. A classic example - a child with congenital hearing loss has excellent vision, notices the smallest details, pays more attention to minor details of the surrounding reality.
Perception is the basis of knowledge of the surrounding world in all its manifestations. In order to feel, a person is given six sense organs and nine varieties of receptors. But in addition to sensations, the information received must be transmitted to the appropriate parts of the brain, where it must go through the process of processing and analysis, drawing up a general picture of reality based on a complex of sensations andlife experience. The result of perception is a picture of the surrounding reality. Violations in at least one link in the chain of obtaining a picture of the world lead to a distortion of reality. Psychiatry as a field of clinical medicine studies the causes, stages of development, signs and symptoms, methods of treatment and prevention of perceptual disorders of both individual phenomena and components of general human he alth problems.
