Pistolas Eleftheria, Wagemans Johan
Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, Department of Brain and Cognition, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Tiensestraat 102 - Box 3711, Leuven 3000, Belgium.
Leuven Brain Institute, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), ON5, Herestraat 49, Leuven 3001, Belgium.
Neurosci Conscious. 2025 Aug 18;2025(1):niaf021. doi: 10.1093/nc/niaf021. eCollection 2025.
A Ganzfeld is a homogeneous, unstructured visual field that is known to induce visual hallucinations. Aside from visual percepts emerging in participants' awareness, Ganzfeld viewing is characterized by decays of color and brightness. The studies dedicated to this topic from the 20 century have focused on these decays, although they have been reported in a confusing way, with different terms for these decaying experiences. This paper synthesizes the current state of the Ganzfeld literature going back to the 1930s with the purpose of clarifying the terminology of the phenomena that have largely retained their mysterious aspects. We built a Ganzfeld space to study the phenomenology without the restricted feeling of a confined space that translucent Ganzfeld goggles cause. Employing a multi-method approach, we combined quantitative and qualitative measures to better grasp the number, kind and temporal dynamics of the experienced phenomena as well as their experiential characteristics. We offer more insight into the different kinds of visual percepts that emerge in participants' awareness, induced by the Ganzfeld, and we identified three distinct types of decays of color and brightness. Based on previously used terminology, we propose to employ the terms 'fade-out', 'black-out' and 'blank-out', and present both the prevalence as well as the qualitative characteristics of these decays. Finally, we shed some light onto the role of eye movements and blinks on the experienced phenomena. All of this is relevant groundwork to be able to study the dynamics of different Ganzfeld experiences, in relation to different states of consciousness and their neural correlates in future work.
ganzfeld是一种均匀、无结构的视野，已知会诱发视觉幻觉。除了参与者意识中出现的视觉感知外，ganzfeld观察的特点是颜色和亮度的衰减。20世纪以来，致力于该主题的研究主要集中在这些衰减上，尽管它们的报道方式令人困惑，对于这些衰减体验有不同的术语。本文综合了可追溯到20世纪30年代的ganzfeld文献的现状，目的是澄清这些在很大程度上仍保持神秘的现象的术语。我们构建了一个ganzfeld空间来研究现象学，避免了半透明ganzfeld护目镜带来的封闭空间的受限感。我们采用多方法途径，将定量和定性测量相结合，以更好地掌握所体验现象的数量、种类和时间动态及其体验特征。我们对ganzfeld诱发的参与者意识中出现的不同类型的视觉感知有了更多的了解，并确定了三种不同类型的颜色和亮度衰减。基于先前使用的术语，我们建议使用“淡出”、“黑屏”和“空白屏”这几个术语，并呈现这些衰减的发生率以及定性特征。最后，我们揭示了眼球运动和眨眼在体验现象中的作用。所有这些都是相关的基础工作，以便在未来的研究中能够研究不同ganzfeld体验的动态，以及与不同意识状态及其神经关联的关系。
