Sensory deprivation examples in media  

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Sensory deprivation examples in media]]

• Altered States starring William Hurt, Blair Brown and Bob Balaban. Based on the novel by Paddy Chayefsky.
• The IPCRESS File (starring Michael Caine) featured a variation on sensory deprivation in the final scene.
• In the television series 24 government agents have used sensory deprivation as a method of interrogation.
• In "Family Matters" Steve Urkel is said to have a sensory deprivation tank. Laura states that she can hear him sobbing from his sensory deprivation tank.
• The Tom Clancy novel The Cardinal of the Kremlin features the descriptive use of a sensory deprivation device by the KGB in brainwashing techniques for counterintelligence purposes.
• The 1960's television show The Twilight Zone featured an episode in which an astronaut spent weeks in a secluded chamber in order to simulate a trip to the moon, leading to hallucinations.
• In the Japanese manga Planetes an isolation chamber is used to examine the mental stability of potential astronauts.
• In the 1968 pilot to the television series Hawaii Five-O, "Cocoon", Red Chinese agent Wo Fat uses a sensory deprivation chamber to procure information from U.S. agents.
• In the television series Alias starring Jennifer Garner sensory deprivation was used on CIA agent Sydney Bristow by The Covenant in order for them to brainwash her into thinking she was someone she was not.
• In the Simpsons episode Make Room for Lisa Lisa and Homer go to an alternative medicine specialist that recommends they spend time in sensory deprivation tanks.
• In the book by George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four, sensory deprivation and its possibly mind-twisting effects are very well described in the second half of the story.
• Arthur Koestler's book, Darkness at Noon, describes sleep deprivation practices during and between interrogations in the 1938 Soviet Union.
• In the film The Jacket, Adrien Brody is placed in an improvised sensory deprivation tank as a part of his rehabilitation treatment. The deprivation tank is an important plot element.
• In the book Quiller Barracuda by Adam Hall, a description of hooding is provided by the main character in the chapter Breakthrough.
• The TV series Earth: Final Conflict features sensory deprivation prisons, where inmates float in an oxygenated fluid, completely deprived of all sensory stimuli.
• In the Larry Niven novella A Gift from Earth, a sensory deprivation tank is used as an interrogation device; in the story it is referred to as "the coffin cure".
• In the H. Beam Piper novel Little Fuzzy, a Company psychologist, Dr. Ernst Mallin, used a sensory deprivation tank on a group of Fuzzies by way of determining how their cognitive functioning differed from humans. Each of the Fuzzies in turn entered a yoga-like state that defeated the effects of the deprivation tank.
• The use of, and mention of, a sensory deprivation tank occurred on several early episodes of Frasier. It was one of Maris' few hobbies.
• In the 2003 superhero film Daredevil, which is based on the eponymous Marvel Comics character, Matt Murdock (Ben Affleck) sleeps in a sensory-deprivation chamber. Because of Murdock's heightened senses, the water in the tank helps to drown out any sound or touch.
• In the Marvel Comics series The ClanDestine, Dominic Destine, who has senses that dwarf even those of Daredevil, when living on his family estate, would spend his time in an anechoic chamber, a sort of sensory deprivation room.<ref>Davis, Alan; The ClanDestine (Vol. 1) #6.</ref> He eventually came to wear an isolation shell generator, which creates anti-stimulation aura, as a sort of portable anechoic chamber.<ref>Davis, Alan; ClanDestine (Vol. 2) #2.</ref>
• Irish author John McGuffin wrote a provocative book, entitled The Guineapigs, documenting the chilling accounts of 14 Irish political detainees held by the British Army over an eight-day period during which they were subjected to extreme sensory deprivation. The accounts are graphic, intense and shocking. The first edition, published in 1974, sold 20,000 copies and was banned by the British government after one week on the shelves.
• Dean Koontz's The Door To December is about a father who subjects his kidnapped daughter to prolonged periods in a sensory deprivation chamber in order to awaken psychic abilities.
• In Dean Koontz's "The Husband" there are a few sections relating to a man who was subjected to prolonged periods in a sensory deprivation room, to increase learning. The room is given the name "the learning room".
• In the 1980 film, Simon, Alan Arkin, who plays the title character, is placed in a sensory deprivation tank and left for several days by scientists who want to brainwash him into believing he is an alien. When he finally comes out of the tank, Arkin performs a pantomime that represents evolution, from primordial ooze to modern man.
• In the TV series Fringe, FBI agent Olivia Dunham, played by Anna Torv, is placed in a sensory tank in order to connect her mind with another dying, comatose character. Later, she uses the tank to connect with the other characters memories that had left an imprint in her mind.
• In the book Psychic Warrior by Robert Doherty, the protagonists are placed in sensory deprivation chambers in preparation for their missions, in order to allow their mind to focus on the "distant present."
• In the 1967 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson The Ganymede Takeover, alien collaborator and psychiatric genius Rudolph Balkani uses the sensory deprivation tank to break resistance sympathizer Joan Hiashi.