Effect of Audio-Visio Hallucinations on Memory in healthy individuals: an Experimental Study

Hallucinations can occur in the absence of sensory stimulation and manifest in a range of sensory modalities, producing vivid experiences of nonexistent occurrences. Experiments in cognitive and experimental psychology have made good use of the idea that associative learning events might trigger conditioning-induced hallucinations. Hallucinations may have an impact on memory. Semantic memory can be changed by hallucinations. Although almost all of human behavior is based on semantic memory, which encompasses all learned information about the outside world, its neurological underpinnings are still unclear. These convergences allow for new representations of perceptual experience that are increasingly abstract and support a range of conceptual activities such as language, social cognition, object recognition, and the amazing ability of humans to remember the past and imagine the future. We first conducted a trial without audio conditioning to ascertain users' cognitive functioning when exposed to generated hallucinations. The results showed that a person's memory may be impacted by particular situations. Subsequently, we designed an interactive scenario with the goal of eliciting mild to moderate negative auditory-visual hallucinations conditioned with positive audio and positive to moderate positive visual hallucinations conditioned with negative audio, followed by a combination of the two. In both visually produced and visually induced hallucinations conditioned by the audio, participants acted out the scenario. Higher degrees of absorption were observed by those who rehearsed the hallucinations conditioned with audio, and this in turn increased the intensity of their cognitive response to the event. Using an advanced program called Psychopy, the individuals' cognitive states were evaluated through the use of a Semantic Memory Scale and PANSS to measure both positive and negative symptoms. Following their exposure to conditionally triggered hallucinations, there was a notable impact on the subjects' semantic memory.