21–30 of 119 posts
> I see what sighted people describe as "white". When I ask a sighted person what they see out of their elbow they typically get it. They see "nothing", but if pressed will usually say "static" or "white".
My right eye is my "main" eye (95%) and my left eye just submits the missing parts from the left that my right can't see because of the nose being in-between.
I always have the right side of my nose in my field of view, except that at the same time it's somehow not there. Like 50% opacity. The left side of my nose isn't visible.
When I "hide" a finger behind my nose for the right eye and look in it's direction it's gone. When I stare straight forward, it appears again.
(My) vision is weird :).
I suspect you experience true blindness (briefly) during laser eye surgery, when the flap is cut in the cornea. I remember how odd it felt - the feeling of seeing nothing at all, not even darkness.
A very interesting take on the perceptions of blind people. I don't think I am acquainted with anyone who has been entirely blind from birth (which is a rare condition of life). I know a professor of psychology (who indeed does much of his research on human visual perception)[1] who has very limited vision, and thus is "legally blind." He began life, I think, with a bit more vision than he has now, but has long been…
In any case, my speech was affected in the way you describe. Most soft sounds started merging, e.g. 's', 'sh', 'tsh', etc. would all end up sounding like 'sh' coming from my mouth, and I had absolutely no idea that was the case. Similarly, I had no idea what the volume of my voice was, it'd either be really loud or really quiet, but rarely at the right level. My parents (mostly) told me I wasn't speaking properly (it took years before anybody realized I was going deaf, including myself), I ended up relying heavily on the vibrations I felt in and around my mouth/throat to correct these as much as possible.
Interesting aside to this aside, there exist implants for people who were born without a cochlea (the spiraly thing which "translates" vibrations). These implants are made of some alloy (not sure what exactly) which thankfully emulate a cochlea, but have the interesting side-effect of causing the affected people to speak with a fairly monotone and somewhat metallic voice.
Strange that the article doesn't mention the blind spot that everyone as. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision)
I wonder if such a phenomenon occurs with people who lost sight during their life and aren't blind by birth, where the brain fills in the blanks based on memory.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always wondered how someone born blind is able to wrap their mind around the concept of color. It appears you've done so -- how would you describe color?
Why should the concept of color be harder to wrap one's mind around or describe than the concept of sight itself? Or, considering any animal with any kind of sensory receptors other than those you yourself have, wrapping your mind around or describing the concept of the data produced by such receptors? [A bat's echolocatory sense, say, or magnetoception...] ["Oh, it's easy to understand the PHYSICS and BIOLOGY of col…
For example, attempt to describe a baseball. Descriptions invoking roundness and texture can be easily understood because the individual retains his/her sense of feel. But saying "it's white in color... white is actually the presence of all colors..." obviously doesn't work.
I'd be curious to hear an example of how you would explain color to someone who has been blind for life.
As someone who has been blind since birth this is accurate. I know that people who go blind later in life continue to dream in color since they have the memory of color to reference while I do not. I wonder if someone who goes blind later in life experiences things differently, possibly by automatically filling in what they assume they would see based on what they know of there surroundings from there other sences.
I am not blind, but I do occasionally get migraines with visual auras, as do my wife & mother. Exactly once in my life that I recall, I had a migraine that caused total perceptual blindness (oddly, this has also happened exactly once to my wife, before we knew each other). It's extremely odd- one's visual field (at least in our cases) steadily contracts, until there's just nothing left. It's not an annulus of darknes…
This is the first time I've heard of anyone else experiencing this phenomenon besides myself. Have there ever been any long-term effects on you?
Mine is slightly different. I don't have migranes, for one. Also, in addition to experiencing exactly what you described (minus the migrane), sometimes I experience the inverse: I can no longer see whatever I look at, but I retain peripheral vision. For example, if I were to look at the "o" in the word "for," I wouldn't be able to see the entire word. I could still read, with difficulty, until the effect became so strong that reading was impossible. (I still had peripheral vision, sort of, but eventually paragraphs became unseeable rather than individual words.)
Whenever any of these things occurred, I was completely normal again within two hours. It was bizarre, and it's mystified myself and two eye doctors. It's only happened less than a dozen times, but it's been happening since I was very young, and my most recent was less than a year ago.
The "blindness" was exactly as you describe: not a blackness, but a nothingness.
Do you happen to have any more info about the condition? It's very elusive.
A very interesting take on the perceptions of blind people. I don't think I am acquainted with anyone who has been entirely blind from birth (which is a rare condition of life). I know a professor of psychology (who indeed does much of his research on human visual perception)[1] who has very limited vision, and thus is "legally blind." He began life, I think, with a bit more vision than he has now, but has long been…
Originally from SF area, I have been living in Tokyo for over a year now, and since moving I rarely speak with native English speakers anymore. I've been told by friends and family on occasion my accent and grammar is slowly deteriorating.
Quite odd.
As someone who has been blind since birth this is accurate. I know that people who go blind later in life continue to dream in color since they have the memory of color to reference while I do not. I wonder if someone who goes blind later in life experiences things differently, possibly by automatically filling in what they assume they would see based on what they know of there surroundings from there other sences.
I've been blind in my left eye since birth and kids often asked me what I saw, assuming that it was just blackness. In my case if you shine a flashlight in my left eye at the right angle I can see a flash of color, but otherwise there's just no perception at all. It's probably worth clarifying what we mean by blind. The article and the parent comment are talking about having no light perception at all. However, many…