「双语」盯着别人的眼睛看10分钟，会看到奇怪的东西

In 2015, a psychologist in Italy figured out how to induce a drug-free altered state of consciousness by asking 20 volunteers to sit and stare into each other’s eyes for 10 minutes straight.

2015年，意大利的一位心理学家通过让20名志愿者坐在一起，直视对方的眼睛10分钟，研究出了如何诱导一种无药改变的意识状态。

Not only did the deceptively simple task bring on strange ‘out of body’ experiences for the volunteers, it also caused them to see hallucinations of monsters, their relatives, and themselves in their partner’s face.

这项看似简单的任务，不仅给志愿者带来了奇怪的“出体”体验，还让他们在伴侣的脸上看到了怪物、亲戚和自己的幻觉。

The experiment, run by Giovanni Caputo from the University of Urbino, involved having 20 young adults (15 of which were women) pair off, sit in a dimly lit room 1 metre away from each other, and stare into their partner’s eyes for 10 minutes.

这项实验由乌尔比诺大学的乔瓦尼·卡普托(Giovanni Caputo)主持，实验内容包括让20名年轻人(其中15名是女性)配对，坐在一间灯光昏暗的房间里，彼此相距一米远，盯着对方的眼睛看10分钟。

The lighting in the room was bright enough for the volunteers to easily make out the facial features of their partner, but low enough to diminish their overall colour perception.

房间里的灯光足以让志愿者们轻易地辨认出伴侣的面部特征，但光线很低，足以削弱他们的整体色彩的感知。

A control group of 20 more volunteers were asked to sit and stare for 10 minutes in another dimly lit room in pairs, but their chairs were facing a blank wall. The volunteers were told very little about the purpose of the study, only that it had to do with a “meditative experience with eyes open”.

另一个由20名志愿者组成的对照组，被要求成对地在另一个光线昏暗的房间里坐着凝视10分钟，但他们的椅子面对的是一堵空白的墙。志愿者们几乎没有被告知这项研究的目的，只知道它与“睁开眼睛冥想的体验”有关。

Once the 10 minutes were up, the volunteers were asked to complete questionnaires related to what they experienced during and after the experiment.

10分钟结束后，志愿者要完成与实验期间和之后经历相关的问卷调查。

One questionnaire focussed on any dissociative symptoms that the volunteers might have experienced, and another questioned them on what they perceived in their partner’s face (eye-staring group) or their own face (control group).

一份调查问卷关注的是志愿者可能经历过的任何游离症状，另一份则询问他们在伴侣的脸上(眼睛凝视组)或自己的脸上(对照组)看到了什么。

Dissociation is a term used in psychology to describe a whole range of psychological experiences that make a person feel detached from their immediate surroundings.

分离是心理学中的一个术语，用来描述一系列的心理体验，这些体验使一个人感到与周围的环境脱节。

Symptoms such as a loss of memory, seeing everything in distorted colours, or feeling like the world isn’t real can be brought on by abuse and trauma; drugs such as ketamine, alcohol, and LSD; and now, apparently, face-staring.

滥用和创伤、氯胺酮、酒精和迷幻药等药物，以及现在明显的面部凝视，都会导致一些症状，如丧失记忆、看到一切扭曲的颜色，或者感觉世界不真实。

“The participants in the eye-staring group said they’d had a compelling experience unlike anything they’d felt before,” Christian Jarrett wrote for the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest at the time.

当时，克里斯蒂安·贾雷特为英国心理学会的研究文摘撰文说：“盯着眼睛的那组人说，他们有一种前所未有的强烈体验。”

Reporting in journal Psychiatry Research, Caputo said the eye-staring group out-scored the control group in all the questionnaires, which suggests that something about staring into another human being’s eyes for 10 uninterrupted minutes had a profound effect on their visual perception and mental state.

卡普托在《精神病学研究》杂志上报道说，在所有的调查问卷中，盯着眼睛的那组人的得分都超过了对照组。这表明，连续10分钟不间断地盯着另一个人的眼睛，会对他们的视觉感知和精神状态产生深远影响。

Jarrett explains:

Jarrett解释道：

“On the dissociative states test, they gave the strongest ratings to items related to reduced colour intensity, sounds seeming quieter or louder than expected, becoming spaced out, and time seeming to drag on. On the strange-face questionnaire, 90 percent of the eye-staring group agreed that they’d seen some deformed facial traits, 75 percent said they’d seen a monster, 50 percent said they saw aspects of their own face in their partner’s face, and 15 percent said they’d seen a relative’s face.”

“在分离状态测试中，他们对与颜色强度降低、声音看起来比预期的更安静或更响亮、变得分散和时间似乎拖延有关的项目给出了最强烈的评价。在“陌生面孔”的调查问卷中，90%的受调查者承认他们看到过一些畸形的面部特征，75%的人说他们看到过怪物，50%的人说他们在伴侣的脸上看到了自己的脸，15%的人说他们看到过亲戚的脸。

The results recalled what Caputo found back in 2010 when he performed a similar experiment with 50 volunteers staring at themselves in a mirror for 10 minutes. The paper, entitled Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion, reports that after less than a minute, the volunteers started seeing what Caputo describes as the “strange-face illusion”.

这些结果让人回想起卡普托在2010年的一项类似实验中发现的情况。当时，他让50名志愿者对着镜子盯着自己看了10分钟。这篇题为《镜子里的怪脸错觉》的论文称，不到一分钟，志愿者们就开始看到卡普托所说的“怪脸错觉”。

“The participants’ descriptions included huge deformations of their own faces; seeing the faces of alive or deceased parents; archetypal faces such as an old woman, child or the portrait of an ancestor; animal faces such as a cat, pig or lion; and even fantastical and monstrous beings,” Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik wrote for Scientific American.

参与者的描述包括他们自己脸部的巨大变形;看到在世或已故父母的脸;典型的面孔，如老妇人、小孩或祖先的画像;动物的脸，如猫、猪或狮子;苏珊娜·马丁内斯-康德(Susana Martinez-Conde)和斯蒂芬·l·马克尼克(Stephen L. Macknik)在为《科学美国人》(Scientific American)撰写的文章中写道。

“All 50 participants reported feelings of ‘otherness’ when confronted with a face that seemed suddenly unfamiliar. Some felt powerful emotions.”

“所有50名参与者都表示，当面对一张突然变得陌生的脸时，他们会有一种‘另类’的感觉。有些人感受到了强烈的情感。”

According to Jarrett at the British Psychological Society, while the eye-staring group of this experiment only scored on average 2.45 points higher than the control group in their questionnaires (which used a five-point scale where 0 is “not at all” and 5 would be “extremely”), Caputo said the effects were stronger than those experienced by the 2010 mirror-staring volunteers.

据英国心理学会的Jarrett说，虽然这项实验中的眼睛注视组在问卷调查中的平均得分仅比对照组高出2.45分(使用5分制，0表示“根本不存在”，5表示“非常严重”)，但卡普托说，这项实验的效果是CTS比2010年的“镜中情”更强大。

So what’s going on here? Martinez-Conde and Macknik explain that it’s likely to do with something called neural adaptation, which describes how our neurons can slow down or even stop their responses to unchanging stimulation.

这是怎么回事?马丁内斯-康德和马克尼克解释说，这可能与一种叫做神经适应的东西有关，它描述了我们的神经元如何减缓甚至停止对不变刺激的反应。

It happens when you stare at any scene or object for an extended period of time – your perception will start to fade until you blink or the scene changes, or it can be rectified by tiny involuntary eye movements called microsaccades.

当你长时间盯着任何场景或物体时，你的感知能力就会开始衰退，直到你眨眼或场景发生变化，或者它可以通过被称为微眼跳的微小的无意识眼球运动来纠正。