"Psychedelic" Effects Produced by Sensory Overload

Despite the volume of research on sensory deprivation, little work has been done on sensory overload. The author reports the preliminary results of a study indicating that approximately 24 percent of 46 normal subjects exposed to sensory overload (consisting of increased light and sound stimulation) reported a variety of subjective "psychedelic" effects. These effects pertained to perceptual distortions, disturbances in sense of time, "otherworldly" feelings, feelings of loss of control, somatic effects, and diminished reality testing.