Making eye contact with someone for 10 minutes can make you hallucinate

Eye contact is a powerful thing. Experts say it can help you do well in job interviews, and can even help you flirt.

They say eyes are the window to the soul. But they’re actually the window to much more.

Forget drugs or staying awake for five days in a row, all you need to hallucinate is another pair of eyes and a spare 10 minutes.

If you and a partner look into each other's eyes for 10 minutes, while sitting in a dimly lit room, you may experience "odd sensations that resemble mild dissociation", according to Christian Jarrett, author of the British Pscyhological Society's Research Digest blog.

This is a psychological term for when people lose their normal hold on reality.

Jarrett cites a study from last year, which found that participants experienced "odd feelings of time slowing down" and "sounds seeming quiet or loud".

An impressive 90 per cent said they’d seen some sort of deformed facial feature in their staring partner, 75 per cent said they’d seen a monster, half saw their own features in their partner’s face, and 15 per cent said they saw a relative’s face.

The participants said they had a "compelling experience unlike anything they’d felt before".

Jarret writes that, while there have been similar studies where participants have stared at a dot on the wall:

Staring into another person’s eyes might be the most effective dissociation-inducing exercise yet

It probably won't be long before the illegal rave scene catches on.

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