wispfox: (brains)
[personal profile] wispfox
When you close your eyes, do you see something?


I was asked this at Thanksgiving, after a long conversation involving face blindness, the fact that I have no visual memory and only vague glimmerings - after a _lot_ of work - of visual imagination. My initial reaction was utter and complete confusion, to the point of asking if the person only asked to get that reaction from me. It was, in fact, a serious question, although the reaction was itself appreciated.

I see nothing at all. I didn't really consider that other people might see something.

Indeed, this makes me wonder if this is why I am so sound-oriented when navigating a dark room; at least some of the other people in the room apparently visualize the room they are in when their eyes are closed. And were, indeed, perplexed when I said that I _listen_ to get around places that I cannot see, in addition to feeling my way. In fact, making noise so other people know where I am actively interferes with my ability to not run into things, because I am no longer able to _listen_. (I can hear when I am near objects because the sound quality changes, especially walls and doors and such. Less so smaller objects, since they are not at my ear height, I suspect, and are less fully encompassing and thus causing echos that I can hear)

Date: 2008-12-04 09:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] caulay.livejournal.com
I see what can best be described as "neural noise". Which my visual cortex tries to map into meaningful images.

The image is mostly dark, brown or black, and at first there is the persistence of the bright patches from when my eyes were open for a period of time. These distort more and more as they fade. After a long enough time, there begin to be bursts of colors, usually in waves or lines and normally limited to small regions.

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