Apophenia s the tendency to attribute meaning to perceived connections or patterns between seemingly unrelated things. Confirmation bias is a variation of apophenia.

 

The term  Apophänie, was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as "unmotivated seeing of connections [accompanied by] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness".

Apophenia has come to imply a universal human tendency to seek patterns in random information, such as gambling.

 

Pareidolia is a type of apophenia involving the perception of images or sounds in random stimuli.

 

A common example is the perception of a face within an inanimate object.

Have you ever been laying outside looking up at the clouds on a nice sunny day and thought that a cloud or two resembled an animal or some other familiar formation? Maybe you perceive the image of a face in the design of your curtains, or maybe the constant quack of a duck sounds a lot like laughter, as if it is mocking you even? Read more?...

 

For my full article on this subject check out my HubPage on: Pareidolia:  http://sarcasticool.hubpages.com/hub/Pareidolia

Wikipedia describes it as “a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant.” 

 

Some people see the Virgin Mary on the toast, or hear demonic messages when playing music backwards (called back masking), and we have all heard of the man in the moon or the face on Mars.

 

This is the psychological phenomenon called Pareidolia. It seems as human beings that our brains are ‘hard-wired’ to recognise familiar images such as faces and human forms, animals and things that make us able to make sense of our surroundings even if they are simply random patterns and stimulus.

 

Pareidolia can cause people to interpret random images, or patterns of light and shadow, as faces.

 

We as human beings always need a reason for why things are as they are and that we feel unique to believe such images in the shape of things we can make sense of can appear to us. Maybe it is our own sense of self importance or the need to believe there is more to something so random than we choose to believe.

 

Déjà vu

The experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously.

 

 The term was coined by a French psychic researcher, Émile Boirac (1851–1917) in his book L'Avenir des sciences psychiques (The Future of Psychic Sciences), which expanded upon an essay he wrote while an undergraduate. The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eeriness", "strangeness", or "weirdness". The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience "genuinely happened" in the past.

 

According to Arthur Funkhouser there are three major types of déjà vu:

 

1. Déjà vécu

 

Usually translated as 'already lived,' déjà vécu is described in a quotation from Charles Dickens:

 

“ We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time – of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances – of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remember it! ”

 

When most people speak of déjà vu, they are actually experiencing déjà vécu. Surveys have revealed that as much as 70% of the population have had these experiences, usually between ages 15 to 25, when the mind is still subjectable to noticing the change in environment. The experience is usually related to a very ordinary event, but it is so striking that it is remembered for several years afterwards.

 

Déjà vécu refers to an experience involving more than just sight, which is why labeling such "déjà vu" is usually inaccurate. The sense involves a great amount of detail, sensing that everything is just as it was before and a weird knowledge of what is going to be said or happen next.

 

More recently, the term déjà vécu has been used to describe very intense and persistent feelings of a déjà vu type, which occur as part of a memory disorder.

 

2. Déjà senti

 

This phenomenon specifies something 'already felt.' Unlike the implied precognition of déjà vu, déjà senti is primarily or even exclusively a mental happening, has no precognitive aspects, and rarely if ever remains in the afflicted person's memory afterwards.

 

Dr. John Hughlings Jackson recorded the words of one of his patients who suffered from temporal lobe or psychomotor epilepsy in an 1889 paper:

 

“ What is occupying the attention is what has occupied it before, and indeed has been familiar, but has been for a time forgotten, and now is recovered with a slight sense of satisfaction as if it had been sought for. ... At the same time, or ... more accurately in immediate sequence, I am dimly aware that the recollection is fictitious and my state abnormal. The recollection is always started by another person's voice, or by my own verbalized thought, or by what I am reading and mentally verbalize; and I think that during the abnormal state I generally verbalize some such phrase of simple recognition as 'Oh yes – I see', 'Of course – I remember', but a minute or two later I can recollect neither the words nor the verbalized thought which gave rise to the recollection. I only find strongly that they resemble what I have felt before under similar abnormal conditions. ”

 

As with Dr. Jackson's patient, some temporal-lobe epileptics may experience this phenomenon.

 

3.  Déjà visité

 

This experience is less common and involves an uncanny knowledge of a new place. The translation is "already visited." Here one may know his or her way around in a new town or landscape while at the same time knowing that this should not be possible.

 

Dreams, reincarnation and also out-of-body travel have been invoked to explain this phenomenon. Additionally, some suggest that reading a detailed account of a place can result in this feeling when the locale is later visited. Two famous examples of such a situation were described by Nathaniel Hawthorne in his book Our Old Home and Sir Walter Scott in Guy Mannering. Hawthorne recognized the ruins of a castle in England and later was able to trace the sensation to a piece written about the castle by Alexander Pope nearly a century earlier.

 

C. G. Jung published an account of déjà visité in his 1952 paper On synchronicity.

 

In order to distinguish déjà visité from déjà vécu, it is important to identify the source of the feeling. Déjà vécu is in reference to the temporal occurrences and processes, while déjà visité has more to do with geography and spatial relations.

 

Jamais vu

Jamais vu is a term in psychology (from the French, meaning "never seen") which is used to describe any familiar situation which is not recognized by the observer.

 

Often described as the opposite of déjà vu, jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer's impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before.

 

Jamais vu is more commonly explained as when a person momentarily does not recognize a word, person, or place that they already know.

 

Jamais vu is sometimes associated with certain types of amnesia and epilepsy.

 

Theoretically, as seen below, a jamais vu feeling in a sufferer of a delirious disorder or intoxication could result in a delirious explanation of it, such as in the Capgras delusion, in which the patient takes a person known by him/her for a false double or impostor. If the impostor is himself, the clinical setting would be the same as the one described as depersonalisation, hence jamais vus of oneself or of the very "reality of reality", are termed depersonalisation (or irreality) feelings.

 

Times Online reports:

 

“ Chris Moulin, of the University of Leeds, asked 92 volunteers to write out "door" 30 times in 60 seconds. At the International Conference on Memory in Sydney last week he reported that 68 per cent of the volunteers showed symptoms of jamais vu, such as beginning to doubt that "door" was a real word. Dr Moulin believes that a similar brain fatigue underlies a phenomenon observed in some schizophrenia patients: that a familiar person has been replaced by an impostor. Dr Moulin suggests they could be suffering from chronic jamais vu.” 

 

Tip of the Tongue (Presque vu)

Déjà vu is similar to, but distinct from, the phenomenon called tip of the tongue (TOT) which is when you cannot recall a familiar word or name or situation, but with effort you eventually recall the elusive memory. In contrast, déjà vu is a feeling that the present situation has occurred before, but the details are elusive because the situation never happened before.

 

Presque vu (from French, meaning "almost seen") is the sensation of being on the brink of an epiphany. Often very disorienting and distracting, presque vu rarely leads to an actual breakthrough. Frequently, one experiencing presque vu will say that they have something "on the tip of their tongue."

 

Presque vu is often cited by people who suffer from epilepsy or other seizure-related brain conditions, such as temporal lobe lability.

 

 

L'esprit de l'escalier

(from French, "staircase wit") is remembering something when it is too late. For example, a clever come-back to a remark, thought of after the conversation has ended. Another example for this is when you're about to take a test and you know everything, but, when it begins, you forget all that you've learned; after taking the test you remember absolutely everything that you had forgotten while taking it.

 

 

 The ear can sometimes hear what the eye can’t see :

The eye has a persistence of .02 seconds meaning any light operating at 50hz or above is perceived to be continuously on.  The ear, on the other hand, is much better at hearing frequency change than the eye is at seeing it.

 

The human ear can detect frequencies from about 50Hz to around 18 KHz on average.  Therefore, many forms of light that can and cannot be discerned by the human eye can be heard by the human ear. 

 

Cognitive displaysia

The feeling you have before you even leave the house that you’re going to forget something and not remember it until you’re on the motorway.

 

Hypnagogic myoclonic twitch or “Hypnic jerk”

The strange falling sensation and muscle twitch.

 

SP Sleep Paralysis

Sleep paralysis, or more properly, sleep paralysis with hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations have been singled out as a particularly likely source of beliefs concerning not only alien abductions, but all manner of beliefs in alternative realities and otherworldly creatures.

 

Sleep paralysis is a condition in which someone, most often lying in a supine position, about to drop off to sleep, or just upon waking from sleep realizes that s/he is unable to move, or speak, or cry out. This may last a few seconds or several moments, occasionally longer. People frequently report feeling a "presence" that is often described as malevolent, threatening, or evil. An intense sense of dread and terror is very common. The presence is likely to be vaguely felt or sensed just out of sight but thought to be watching or monitoring, often with intense interest, sometimes standing by, or sitting on, the bed.

On some occasions the presence may attack, strangling and exerting crushing pressure on the chest.

 

People also report auditory, visual, proprioceptive, and tactile hallucinations, as well as floating sensations and out-of-body experiences.

 

These various sensory experiences have been referred to collectively as hypnagogic and hypnopompic experiences (HHEs). People frequently try, unsuccessfully, to cry out. After seconds or minutes one feels suddenly released from the paralysis, but may be left with a lingering anxiety. Extreme effort to move may even produce phantom movements in which there is proprioceptive feedback of movement that conflicts with visual disconfirmation of any movement of the limb. People may also report severe pain in the limbs when trying to move them. Several recent surveys suggest that between 25-30% of the population reports that they have experienced at least a mild form of sleep paralysis at least once and about 20-30% of these have had the experience on several occasions.

 

A few people may have very elaborate experiences almost nightly (or many times in a night) for years. Aside from many of the very disturbing features of the experience itself (described in succeeding sections) the phenomenon is quite benign. It was thought in the past that it was a significant part of the so-called "narcoleptic tetrad", but recent surveys of non-clinical populations, such as ours, suggest that the prevalence may be as high among the general population as among diagnosed narcoleptics. 

 

In contrast to the experiences centered on sensed presence or pressure, the unusual bodily sensations do not necessarily imply threatening external agency. Although out-of-body experiences, when accompanying trauma and/or seizures, can be associated with fear (Devinsky, Feldman, Burrowes, & Bromfield, 1989), broader surveys have reported strong associations with feelings of calm, peace, and joy (Twemlow, Gabbard, & Jones, 1982).

"experienced UFO researchers have drawn parallels between the nature of angels, demons,and the UFO occupants. Indeed, some--including Jacques Vallee, John Keel, and others ---have even suggested that our alien visitors may indeed be fallen angels or demons themselves."

 

In 2010 this phenomenon of collective false memory was dubbed the "Mandela Effect" by self-described "paranormal consultant" Fiona Broome, in reference to a false memory she reports, of the death of South African leader Nelson Mandela in the 1980s (rather than in 2013 when he actually died), which she claims is shared by "perhaps thousands" of other people.

 

Broome has speculated about alternate realities as an explanation, but most commentators suggest that these are instead examples of false memories shaped by similar factors affecting multiple people, such as social reinforcement of incorrect memories,  or false news reports and misleading photographs influencing the formation of memories based on them.

 

Some examples of this are:

 

The TV series Sex and the City, but many people insist they remember it being “Sex IN THE City” at some point. Some people have even posted pictures of old memorabilia they have that supports their false memory..

 

People think the Monopoly man, Rich Uncle Pennybags, has a monocle, but he doesn’t.

 

Curious George never had a tail. 

A lot of people even claim to remember seeing him use his tail to swing from the trees. If you look up pictures of Curious George right now, you’ll see that he doesn’t have a tail, meaning either your memory made the whole thing up or you’ve, drifted into a parallel universe, as some actually believe.

 

The Berenstein Bears" are actually called "the Berenstain Bears.

This is one of the more popular Mandela effect debates, in which some people seem to recall the book series/cartoon about a family of bears being known as The Berenstein Bears. However, if you look now, they’re actually called The Berenstain Bears. Many folks insist they remember it being spelled with an “e,” and one Redditor even found an old VHS tape of the cartoon, and the label shows “Berenstein.”

 

While the famous Snow White quote you’ve probably heard others say and repeated yourself is “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” it turns out the correct line is “Magic mirror on the wall.” Some people also remember the second part of that quote being “Who is the fairest of them all?” but apparently it's “Who is the fairest one of all?”

 

Some say a famous Kelogg's cereal had it's speeling had changed saying it was originally "Fruit Loops" and then changed to "Froot Loops,” while others believe it went from “Froot Loops” to “Fruit Loops." Many people claim this change happened during their childhood, while others say they just noticed it in recent months. Whatever you believe, if you google the cereal or find a box in real life, you’ll see “Froot Loops” printed across the front.

 

A lot of folks passionately insist that the Mona Lisa has changed, because they remember her having a straight face, but now they feel it seems as if she’s got a smirk.

 

Some people seem to remember there being a dash in Kit Kat, making it “Kit-Kat,” but there isn’t one, and that frustrates them because they’re sure that once upon a time, there was one.

 

Many claim to recall a genie movie from the ’90s that starred Sinbad, some say it was called "Shazam"; the only problem is, there never was one. Those same people insist they aren’t confusing it with the 1996 flick Kazaam, which starred Shaq as a genie. They don’t know what happened to the movie’s existence, but they’re all very certain that once upon a time, it was a thing.

 

It seems that the majority of people confidently remember Forrest Gump stating that his mama always said, “Life is like a box of chocolates.” Well, it turns out that he actually said, “Life was like a box of chocolates,” despite what you may’ve felt you distinctly remembered.

 

People rember a certain Tom Cruise film being titled "Interview With a Vampire" but it’s actually Interview With THE Vampire, despite the fact that entering “Interview With” into Google shows Interview With a Vampire as the top search, because most people remember that being the title.

 

 

  

Topics related to false memory include:

 

False memory syndrome, a condition in which a person's identity and relationships are affected by strongly believed but false memories of traumatic experiences.

 

Source-monitoring error, an effect in which memories are incorrectly attributed to different experiences than the ones that caused them.

 

Misinformation effect, false memories caused by exposure to misleading information presented between the encoding of an event and its subsequent recall.

 

Confabulation, the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories without the conscious intention to deceive.

 

Repressed memory, the idea that traumatic memories can be repressed and also potentially brought back through therapy.

 

 Opia

This is the name given to the intense feeling of invasive arousal that one feels when engaging in a mutual gaze—making direct eye contact with someone else. A great deal of research has been done on eye contact and it is well established that eye contact can be arousing. The arousal is often interpreted based on the circumstances. If the person is perceived as a threat, it is unpleasant. If two people are attracted to each other, it is pleasant and in some cases arousing.

Ellipsism

This is the term given to a sense of sadness one experiences when realizing that one won’t live to see the future. For example, an elderly person may be sad because he won’t get to see a newborn baby age into adulthood.

Chrysalism

This is that sense of warmth, peace, and tranquility when you are warm and dry inside the house during an intense rainstorm. This experience could be likened to feeling like you are back in the womb, and so has been labeled "Chrysalism."

Adronitis

This is a sense of frustration experienced when meeting a new and interesting person, but realising how long it is going to take to develop the relationship fully. You want the relationship to develop quickly, but you know it won’t. Research on relationships suggests that one mechanism for developing closeness is reciprocal self-disclosure, i.e. successively revealing personal information to each other, which takes some time.

Liberosis

The desire to care less about things. As we mature into adults, we take on more and more responsibilities. Liberosis is the feeling you get when you wish you could be a child again, without cares and concerns.

 Enouement

Have you ever wished that you could go back in time and tell your past self about the future? This is enouement. When something has turned out well, you recall how your younger self worried about it, and you wish that you could go back and let your younger self know that things will turn out OK.

Jouska

This is a hypothetical conversation that you play out over and over in your head. For example, replaying an argument in your head where you say all the right things and “win” the argument, or practising asking your boss for a raise and playing out his or her responses and your comebacks.

Exulansis

A sense of frustration when you realise that you are talking about an important experience, but other people are unable to understand or relate to it, and so you give up talking about it.

Fugue state.

This is a psychological condition in which the individual moves about and speaks, but without conscious awareness. Fugue states can be alcohol or drug induced, where an individual has no memory of his or her actions.

Lypophrenia 

A vague feeling of sorrow or sadness seemingly without any apparent cause or source.

Agnosia

The loss of the ability to recognise objects, faces, voices, or places. It is a rare disorder. If you have this condition you can still think, speak, and interact with the world. Agnosia usually affects only a single information pathway in the brain. There are different types of agnosia, i.e Visual Agnosia.

Prosopagnosia.

Also known as "face blindness" or facial agnosia,is a cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognise familiar faces, including one's own face (self-recognition), is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing (e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual functioning (e.g., decision-making) remains intact. 

 

 

(Sensation is the body's detection of external or internal stimulation or the process by which our senses like vision, hearing and smell, receive and relay outside stimuli.)

 

(Perception (from the Latin perceptio) is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information, or the environment and to put everything into context.)

 

Note: Many of the following disorders, delusions and/or syndromes may fall under the umbrella term Delusional misidentification syndrome introduced by Christodoulou (in his book The Delusional Misidentification Syndromes, Karger, Basel, 1986) for a group of delusional disorders that occur in the context of mental and neurological illness. They all involve a belief that the identity of a person, object, or place has somehow changed or has been altered. As these delusions typically only concern one particular topic, they also fall under the category called monothematic delusions (a delusional state that concerns only one particular topic). This is contrasted by what is sometimes called multi-thematic or polythematic delusions where the person has a range of delusions (typically the case of schizophrenia). These disorders can occur within the context of schizophrenia or dementia or they can occur without any other signs of mental illness. When these disorders are found outside the context of mental illness, they are often caused by organic dysfunction as a result of traumatic brain injury, stroke, or neurological illness.

 

Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder characterised by the inability to recognize faces.

It is also known as face blindness or facial agnosia. The term prosopagnosia comes from the Greek words for “face” and “lack of knowledge.”

 

Todd's syndrome AKA Alice in Wonderland syndrome (AIWS)

This is a disorienting neuropsychological condition that affects perception. People experience size distortion such as; micropsia (objects are perceived to be smaller than they actually are), macropsia (objects within an affected section of the visual field appear larger than normal, causing the person to feel smaller than they actually are), pelopsia (objects appear nearer than they actually are), or teleopsia (objects appear much further away than they are) 

 

Apotemnophilia

(also called Body integrity identity disorder (BIID), also referred to as amputee identity disorder)

This iis a psychological disorder in which otherwise healthy individuals perceive one or more of their limbs or organs as alien to the rest of their body. They genrally have a desire to have the otherwise healthy limb(s) amputated. Apotemnophilia may be related to right parietal lobe damage in the brain. The condition is challenging to treat because people experiencing it often do not seek treatment. However, both cognitive behavioral therapy and aversion therapies can be attempted in order to treat apotemnophilia once treatment is sought.

 

Capgras delusion syndrome

This is a psychiatric disorder in which a person holds a reoccurring delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member (or pet) has been replaced by an identical impostor.

 

The Fregoli delusion, or the delusion of doubles, is a rare disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that different people are in fact a single person who changes appearance or is in disguise.

 

Clinical lycanthropy

Is defined as a rare psychiatric syndrome that involves a delusion that the affected person can transform into, has transformed into, or is a non-human animal

 

Stockholm syndrome

The tendency of a hostage to bond with their captor.

 

Reduplicative paramnesia

This is the delusional belief that a place or location has been duplicated, existing in two or more places simultaneously, or that it has been 'relocated' to another site.

 

Intermetamorphosis

This is a delusional misidentification syndrome.  The main symptoms consist of patients believing that they can see others change into someone else in both external appearance and internal personality.

It is related to agnosia (the inability to process sensory information. Often there is a loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss.)

 

The syndrome of subjective doubles

This is a rare delusional misidentification syndrome in which a person experiences the delusion that he or she has a double or Doppelgänger with the same appearance, but usually with different character traits, that is leading a life of its own.

 

Mirrored-self misidentification

The delusional belief that one's reflection in the mirror is another person – typically a younger or second version of one's self, a stranger, or a relative.

 

Cotard delusion

Is a rare mental illness in which the affected person holds the delusional belief that they are already dead, do not exist, are putrefying, or have lost their blood or internal organs.

 

Delusional companion syndrome

This is considered a neuropathology of the self, specifically a delusional misidentification syndrome. Affected individuals believe certain non-living objects possess consciousness and can think independently and feel emotion. ... Comforting objects like cuddly toys are often the focus of delusion.

 

Clonal pluralization of the self, relatives and others. 

The delusional belief that that there are many physically and psychologically identical copies of a given original. This seems to be a new variant of misidentification syndrome,

 

Confabulation

A disturbance of memory, defined as the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive.

 

Hemispatial neglect,

(also called hemiagnosia, hemineglect, unilateral neglect, spatial neglect, contralateral neglect, hemi-inattention, neglect syndrome or contralateral hemispatialagnosia)

Is a neuropsychological condition in which, after damage to one hemisphere of the brain is sustained, a deficit in attention to and awareness of one side of the field of vision is observed. It is defined by the inability of a person to process and perceive stimuli on one side of the body or environment, where that inability is not due to a lack of sensation.

 

Stendhal Syndrome

(also called hyperculturemia or Florence syndrome.)

 

Those with Stendhal syndrome experience physical and emotional anxiety as well as panic attacks, dissociative experiences, confusion and hallucinations when exposed to art. These symptoms are usually triggered by “art that is perceived as particularly beautiful or when the individual is exposed to large quantities of art that are concentrated in a single place,” such as a museum or gallery, Medscape says. However, individuals may experience similar reactions to beauty in nature. This syndrome is named after a 19th-century French author who experienced the symptoms during a trip to Florence in 1817. 

 

 

Alien Hand Syndrome

 This syndrome is characterised by the belief that one’s hand “does not belong to oneself, but that it has its own life,” Medscape says. Individuals experiencing alien hand syndrome have normal sensation but feel their hand is autonomous, with a “will of its own.” Those with alien hand syndrome may personify the limb as a separate entity: the unaffected hand is under the individual’s control while the affected hand has its own agenda. This syndrome may occur in individuals who have damage to the corpus callosum, which connects the two cerebral hemispheres of the brain. Other causes include stroke and damage to the parietal lobe. The hands then appear to be in “intermanual conflict” or “ideomotor apraxia,” meaning they act in opposition to one another.

 

Troxler Effect

(also called Troxler's fading or Troxler fading.)

This is an optical illusion affecting visual perception. When one fixates on a particular point for even a short period of time, an unchanging stimulus away from the fixation point will fade away and disappear. Recent research suggests that at least some portion of the perceptual phenomena associated with Troxler's fading occurs in the brain.

Troxler's fading has been attributed to the adaptation of neurons vital for perceiving stimuli in the visual system. It is part of the general principle in sensory systems that unvarying stimuli soon disappear from our awareness. For example, if a small piece of paper is dropped on the inside of one's forearm, it is felt for a short period of time. Soon, however, the sensation fades away. This is because the tactile neurons have adapted and start to ignore the unimportant stimulus. But if one jiggles one's arm up and down, giving varying stimulation, one will continue to feel the paper.