Sensory deprivation (sensory hunger) occurs in those cases when the sensory organs, which provide the central nervous system with the necessary information from the external environment, lose their usual impulses from the outside. The most common visual or auditory sensory deprivation. Visual deprivation occurs, for example, with prolonged exposure to darkness. Auditory sensory deprivation develops in a person who has been in a room for a long time, where no habitual “life” sound familiar from early childhood penetrates. It has been established that in conditions of sensory deprivation various neuropsychic disturbances can occur, especially in unstable, emotionally labile individuals. 

In this regard, the story of a foreign scientist is of interest : at one of the enterprises built according to the most modern requirements of engineering equipment, workers were completely isolated from each other and they did not hear a single sound from the external environment; as a result, a number of them began to experience neuropsychic disorders, reaching in some cases to the level of psychotic ones. 

The features of mental disorders in sensory deprivation have not yet been studied sufficiently and mainly in experimental conditions [O. Kuznetsov, V. I. Lebedev]. The lack of habitual social contacts necessary for a person to have normal mental activity contributes to the emergence of a state of social deprivation, the clinical features of which are also not well understood.  
 

It is important to note that partial and even full sensory (visual or auditory and at the same time visual and auditory) deprivation is also found in everyday life: blindness, deafness, deaf-blindness. The psychological characteristics of the blind are described by A. A. Krogius, and the psychological characteristics of deaf children are described by I. M. Soloviev, J. I. Shif, T. V. Rozanova and I. V. Yashkova. However, in these monographs there is no information on the psychopathological disorders observed in this contingent of patients.  

Vision and its meaning

In the process of ontogenesis, the accumulated visual information is complicated, improved, differentiated, harmoniously linked with memory functions, ideas, speech and thinking. However, a systematic and consistent study of this problem began only in the 20-30s of the XX century [Krogius A. A., Osipova V. N., Mnukhin S. S, Villey R., Burklen K., etc.].  

The concept of “ household blindness ” as applied to the category of practically blind persons whose residual vision (visual acuity) does not exceed 0.04.

A visual impairment in the form of absolute and everyday blindness is the subject of consideration on our MedUniver website in the coming days.    

From the standpoint of a sighted person, blindness seems to be one of the most serious physical inconveniences, since the patient’s world is plunged into impenetrable darkness and loses its multicolor and multiform beauty. However, from the standpoint of a man born blind or who lost his sight in early childhood due to the large compensatory capabilities of the body, the lack of vision does not cause significant inconvenience and is perceived quite naturally. Numerous studies have shown that turning off vision is not a brake on the mental development and improvement of many qualities of a blind person. Noteworthy statement 

A. V. Birilev , who, being himself blind, wrote that the idea of ​​blindness as spiritual and inevitable suffering is vulgar. According to him, V. G. Korolenko in the novel “The Blind Musician” gave a wrong idea about the character of the blind person as a whole. In his opinion, blindness should be considered no more than a physical inconvenience. The same opinion was shared by many ophthalmologists, typhlopedologists and psychologists. However, undoubtedly a lot of it depends on the personality and characterological characteristics of a person, upbringing and the environment.