Dissociation
A new study messes with our sense of reality. Reuters

Psychologists have a term for that odd feeling of being totally disconnected from reality. Dissociation is the scientific term for this experience, and its effects can range from mild to severe.

An Italian psychologist's experiment managed to recreate this feeling by having pairs of people stare at each other for 10 minutes in a dimly lit room. The results were rather interesting. Most of the pairs saw deformed facial features and monsters. Some pairs saw a loved one's face while staring at the other's eyes. Sound interesting? The experiment can easily be replicated at home.

The study involved 20 young participants -- 15 females and five males -- separated into 10 pairs. The subjects sat across from each other in a dimly lit room -- with just enough light so the participants could see finer facial traits -- and stared into the other person's eyes for 10 minutes. There was a control group that included 20 individuals who were instructed to stare at the wall.

Once the staring session was complete, the two groups were asked to fill out a survey and the results were unnvering. The group that stared into the eyes of another person experienced more dissociative experiences than the control group. The effects included zoning out, sounds becoming amplified or quieter than expected, time slowing down and reduced color intensity. That seems tame enough and probably what you would expect if you stared into someone's eyes for 10 minutes, but the group also experienced some peculiar facial distortions.

Per the survey, 90 percent of the subjects saw deformed facial features while 75 percent said they saw a monster, according to the British Psychological Society. Other participants saw their own faces (50 percent) and a relative's face (15 percent). "Strange-face apparitions may characterize the rebound to 'reality' (perceptual reality caused by external stimulus and hallucinatory reality caused by internal input) from a dissociative state induced by sensory deprivation," author Giovanni Caputo, of the University of Urbino in Italy, explained in the abstract.

In a previous study, Caputo tested the "Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion," which requires dim lighting and staring into a mirror for 10 minutes. A writer at Scientific American tried it and found the experience "thrilling. "Disappointingly, I did not see any monstrous creatures or ghosts of ancestors calling me from the beyond (or even Satan, for that matter), but I think I came close to seeing one of the 'archetypal' faces," the author said.