I am most intrigued by the ideas that came up in the latter 10 or 20 comments, namely the similar experiences of people under the influence of psychoactive substances, hinting at the possibility that hallucinations and visions might not simply be random activity of idling parts of the brain, even though it seems to be a very plausible explanation. I agree with »documented« citing Don J »… that our modern scientific view of the world is a correct one, but is only a part of the whole story & that – in order to keep us “sane” our brain filters out a lot of what is out there…«. There’s no doubt in our Western civilization’s scientific world view being correct as scientific proof is irrefutable. However, that is not to say it is complete. I’m convinced we are missing out on something.

With regard to the evidence of »8.75 megabits per second« worth of visual data input to the eye – I’m not a neurologist, but I find this figure rather questionable as well. 8.75 Mbit/s is only about 1.1 MBytes/s. That’s a ridiculously small number (an uncompressed stream of NTSC video data (TV!) is roughly 44 (!) MBytes/s [640 * 480 pixels * 3 bytes/pixel (RGB) * 50 frames per second / 1024 / 1024] – I think most people would agree that human vision is superior to TV in a way such that even the thought of comparing the two is silly). Did the scientists explicitly measure pixels in their experiments? Or, rather, nerve impulses? — I disagree strongly with the prevalent notion of comparing the brain and the nervous system with a digital computer. That is obviously a very, very crude model, but a lot of people seem to take it seriously. Not only is the nervous system analog in nature (allowing much more information to be encoded than the 0/1-absoluteness of digital), but it would appear that nervous impulses carry information (»data«) in ways that are incredibly more complex than a bunch of electrons in a wire.

misanthrope, PhilD, Silverhill, Techno-Kid: I could read and understand both the English and the French jumbled-up words, even though my native language is German (I know English fairly well and my French is so-so). I think it depends a lot on the way you read.

I was surprised to read ifeelya’s comment about hallucinations from Prozac. I was pretty sure Fluoxetine should not induce hallucinations, but a quick search seems to prove otherwise: http://www.google.de/search?q=prozac%20hallucinations

PS. I LOL’ed at all the CBS (tv station) jokes!

(BTW: I could not post this from Safari/Mac and had to do it in Firefox. The preview seems to use some JavaScript code that doesn’t work in Safari. The page just fades to dark and then nothing happens.)

I completely agree… Not okay!
I hope this doesn’t happen to me…

I have been working on ways to fix it. An uphill fight. I figure I have a half year to two years before my left eye is in the same position. But I believe I have slowed down the progress of the damage to both eyes significantly in the past year. More on this over at my place, for anyone with developing cataracts who wants to stave off an operation for a few extra years. Just root around in the archives. Might even be an operation to remove a damaged eye I did for my favorite cat Felice, who almost croaked from blunt force trauma which had been applied by an unknown assailant in my back yard. The eye was actually in front of the orbit and well pressurized… Uh, maybe I should stop there.

I doubt anybody wants to hear anything about an impromptu eye removal from a critically injured pet cat. I’ll just say Felice is now fat and sassy, doesn’t seem to miss the eye, and doesn’t seem to hold it against me that I operated without an anesthetic. He was very good about it. I couldn’t have done it without his cooperation.

His broken upper jaw came out quite well as well, which is a relief. I would have hated to have him on soft foods forever.

My right eye has a cataract which prevents sharp detail at any distance and causes loss of contrast problems as well. I have noticed that during driving, I sometimes misinterpret what even the better left eye sees for a split second. This misinterpretation is in fact a momentary hallucination. I must compensate with much greater alertness and concentration. That is to say, because of this developing problem, I use my brain with considerably greater facility. It is not just our other senses that are sharpened when one sense is diminished. Our ability to think is also strengthened in some odd ways.

A stroke impaired my ability as a chess coach a few years ago. Having been a coach for half a century, I was dismayed by this turn of events. I estimated that I had lost something on the order of 40 IQ points. What could be the possible upside of this?

I was able to understand the difficulties of those around me because of the new difficulties in thinking and concentration that I was having. And in relearning many of my skills, I learned new things that I would have been very unlikely to learn without the felt need provided by the injured brain. The plasticity of the brain astonishes me. Before the stroke, I was difficult to astonish. Nothing is routine anymore. The jaded dilettante is gone. The wondering child is back. I still haven’t gotten back everything I lost, but the bonuses more than make up for it.