<p>There are certainly some anecdotal stories that hallucinations (as part of psychosis) occured in highly creative people e.g. van Gogh or in the families of some creative people, <a href="http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/blogs/confusing-psychosis-imagination" rel="nofollow noreferrer">such as the story of James Joyce's daugher</a>. But that's anecdotal evidence. I tried to find whether some (psychometric) measure of imagination correlates with hallucinations, but not much luck with that insofar. [And that's not because such measures of imagination don't exist at all; some <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4612655/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">have been proposed</a>. I'll update this part if I find something relating them to hallucinatons.]</p>

<p>What I could find out is that hallucinations are correlated with a confusion between imagination and (actual) perception, both <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18444716" rel="nofollow noreferrer">visually</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14613682" rel="nofollow noreferrer">auditory</a>.</p>

<p>On a slightly more positive note, the propensity for hallucinations was also associated with <a href="http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/how-hallucinations-emerge-from-trying-to-make-sense-of-an-ambiguous-world" rel="nofollow noreferrer">a better pattern matching ability</a> in some visual tests with highly confusing images, but this was only when exposed to the full image before, i.e. a form of bias toward prior knowledge.</p>

<p>Perhaps the above aren't so surprising given that a lot of normal people <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1707489" rel="nofollow noreferrer">(about half it seems)</a> hallucinate in sensory deprivation experiments. A somewhat similar situation was observed in people who <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7578664" rel="nofollow noreferrer">experienced hallucinations as a side-effect of higher doses of tricyclic antidepressants</a>, namely that their hallucinations occured when background noise was low. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_release_hallucinations" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Charles Bonnet syndrome</a> is anohter case of reduced stimuli; Oliver Sacks has a <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_what_hallucination_reveals_about_our_minds" rel="nofollow noreferrer">talk at TED about it</a>. So if anything, hallucinations are associated with not enough perception.</p>

<p>Note however that there's a rich tradition in philosophy of discussing imagination and hallucinations together. E.g. there's a MIT Press book titled 
<em>Hallucination: Philosophy and Psychology</em> with quite a few <a href="https://books.google.com/books?redir_esc=y&amp;id=_bwtAAAAQBAJ&amp;q=imagination" rel="nofollow noreferrer">hits inside for "imagination"</a> So it's quite possible I've missed some relevant issue. Do note as a caveat that one of the papers (by K. Farkas) in that book mentioned early on that</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>The notion of hallucination most commonly discussed in philosophy is somewhat
  different from the notion used in psychology or psychiatry.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Likewise there's a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Humanities</em></a> paper that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/h3020132" rel="nofollow noreferrer">discusses them together</a>. (Despite the dubious venue in which it was published, it is cited by papers in more reputable journals, so perhaps worth a read--but it's 50 pages, so don't expect me to do it.)</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-01-10T19:10:04.627Z
And I'm going out on a limb here, but some autistic people [self-report vivid or "too much" imagination](https://youtu.be/jQ95xlZeHo8?t=114) and according to some theories autism and schizophrenia lie on a spectrum or at least share some common genetic causes: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2017.00069/full
got trolled too much this week
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-01-10T16:51:32.050Z
2018-01-10T20:12:01.027Z
2018-01-10T20:12:01.027Z
got trolled too much this week
<p>What about the type of imagination which medicine calls hallucinations? Is it a great gift or a curse for those who sense extremely? Is imagination a mild form of hallucinating? </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-01-10T11:21:03.317Z
Welcome and thanks for your question. Can you explain your last sentence? Hallucinations are pretty well described in terms of brain imaging. However, on a scientific site like this the community may not take future telling seriously. Apart from that, the connection between imagination and hallucination versus the  future in opposition to scientific prognosis is obscure to me  regardless.
AliceD
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-01-10T11:42:04.193Z
And what do you mean by "sense extremely"? [SPS/HPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_sensitivity)?
got trolled too much this week
<hallucinations>
What type of imagination is responsible for hallucinations?
Lady Fickle
# What type of imagination is responsible for hallucinations?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-01-10)

What about the type of imagination which medicine calls hallucinations? Is it a great gift or a curse for those who sense extremely? Is imagination a mild form of hallucinating?

**Tags:** hallucinations

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Welcome and thanks for your question. Can you explain your last sentence? Hallucinations are pretty well described in terms of brain imaging. However, on a scientific site like this the community may not take future telling seriously. Apart from that, the connection between imagination and hallucination versus the  future in opposition to scientific prognosis is obscure to me  regardless.  
> **username_2**: And what do you mean by "sense extremely"? [SPS/HPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_sensitivity)?  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2018-01-10. Score: 2

There are certainly some anecdotal stories that hallucinations (as part of psychosis) occured in highly creative people e.g. van Gogh or in the families of some creative people, [such as the story of James Joyce's daugher](http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/blogs/confusing-psychosis-imagination). But that's anecdotal evidence. I tried to find whether some (psychometric) measure of imagination correlates with hallucinations, but not much luck with that insofar. [And that's not because such measures of imagination don't exist at all; some [have been proposed](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4612655/). I'll update this part if I find something relating them to hallucinatons.]

What I could find out is that hallucinations are correlated with a confusion between imagination and (actual) perception, both [visually](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18444716) and [auditory](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14613682).

On a slightly more positive note, the propensity for hallucinations was also associated with [a better pattern matching ability](http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/how-hallucinations-emerge-from-trying-to-make-sense-of-an-ambiguous-world) in some visual tests with highly confusing images, but this was only when exposed to the full image before, i.e. a form of bias toward prior knowledge.

Perhaps the above aren't so surprising given that a lot of normal people [(about half it seems)](http://www.jstor.org/stable/1707489) hallucinate in sensory deprivation experiments. A somewhat similar situation was observed in people who [experienced hallucinations as a side-effect of higher doses of tricyclic antidepressants](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7578664), namely that their hallucinations occured when background noise was low. [Charles Bonnet syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_release_hallucinations) is anohter case of reduced stimuli; Oliver Sacks has a [talk at TED about it](https://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_what_hallucination_reveals_about_our_minds). So if anything, hallucinations are associated with not enough perception.

Note however that there's a rich tradition in philosophy of discussing imagination and hallucinations together. E.g. there's a MIT Press book titled
*Hallucination: Philosophy and Psychology* with quite a few [hits inside for "imagination"](https://books.google.com/books?redir_esc=y&id=_bwtAAAAQBAJ&q=imagination) So it's quite possible I've missed some relevant issue. Do note as a caveat that one of the papers (by K. Farkas) in that book mentioned early on that

> The notion of hallucination most commonly discussed in philosophy is somewhat
> different from the notion used in psychology or psychiatry.

Likewise there's a [*Humanities*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI) paper that [discusses them together](https://doi.org/10.3390/h3020132). (Despite the dubious venue in which it was published, it is cited by papers in more reputable journals, so perhaps worth a read--but it's 50 pages, so don't expect me to do it.)

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: And I'm going out on a limb here, but some autistic people [self-report vivid or "too much" imagination](https://youtu.be/jQ95xlZeHo8?t=114) and according to some theories autism and schizophrenia lie on a spectrum or at least share some common genetic causes: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2017.00069/full  

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