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How is vision enhanced by psychedelics?

I think this is because psychedelics allow you to focus one any one particular thing with more of your body than you are generally used to (for some of us, anyhow, at least).

I've noticed that when I hallucinate on psychedelics, it is because I am not actually focusing on what I am looking at, but either to the side or past the object (into the distance). I've found that the most impressive hallucinations occur when I try to focus as far into the distance behind the object as I can. I can say this has something to do with how big my sense of "self" is at that moment, but of course, I cannot directly back up any such talk.

I think it's possible that psychedelics relax your mind and open up left-right brain communication and thus allow your eyes to focus better relative to each other than they normally would, if not actually letting your lenses focus better individually.
 
shulginist - I have noticed psychedelics improve my eyesight as well. And I'm nearsighted too. Things are sharper & not so pixilated. I wish someone could come up with eyedrops or something that would have the same effect. I don't hallucinate or have any other visual effectation (is that a word?).
 
I think it wouldn't work as a topical treatment, as the effects won't be on the function of the eye, but on the processing centres in the brain.

Honestly, I think that any improvement in vision is due to psychedelics giving the brain more capacity to 'fill in the gaps' with what it thinks should be there from previous experience. A good test would be to be shown an object, or such like that you've never come across before, at a distance that would normally be a blurred mess, get you to describe or draw what you've seen, then compare the drawing with the actual object.

You can't really use leaves on a tree or such-like, as everybody knows what leaves are supposed to look like, so it's not difficult for your brain to fill in the gaps
 
Dope_User said:
I know that 'shrooms' cause VERY dilated pupils causing more light to enter. This is my guess as to why everything seems 'brighter.' Because everything seems 'brighter,' I often feel like I can see better. I'm not sure if this is actually improving my vision though (I'd guess not).

Can you see without glasses/contacts when shrooming? How bad is your eyesight (only 20/40 or pretty high, 20/200)?
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i had my eyes dilated (to the extent that they are dilated during a heavy roll or shroom trip) for an eye exam, the dilation lasted several hours. the colors weren't enhanced in any way similar to what low dose psychedelics do. so i don't believe it's just the opening of the iris which causes everything to appear more 'lucid'... something is happening in the brain's interpretation of the signals it gets, the eye itself functions normlly

terrence mckenna talks about his theory concerning pre-civilization african tribal humans who probably used low amounts of psychedelic mushrooms before hunting to improve visual acuity, and the same enhancement of vision was of use to the people not hunting (picking berries making clothing etc)

once a month they had mushroom festivals where the more spiritual and sexual aspects of higher doses were explored...:p

casey17 said:
shulginist - I have noticed psychedelics improve my eyesight as well. And I'm nearsighted too. Things are sharper & not so pixilated. I wish someone could come up with eyedrops or something that would have the same effect. I don't hallucinate or have any other visual effectation (is that a word?).
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someone on BL was posting about how Hydergine (a serotonin and dopamine agonist which increases blood/oxygen flow to the brain, a nootropic) produces a similar 'clearer more colorful vision' for that person. hydergine affects the same receptors as the classical psychedelics
 
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bilz0r said:
As I've said, I get the exact same sensation as has been described, both the "eagle-eye" as well as just increased visual accuity, but the fact remains, it is impossible for a fully relaxed eye to relax any further, as well as the fact that I've felt that I've seen things that people with perfect vision couldn't see (and that infact wern't there).
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the vision-enhancing action is not being done to the eye itself, it's being done in the brain. it's an enhancement of the processing of the visual data, not the reception of the light signals
 
there is an additional factor:
5ht2a agonists do reduce intraoccular pressure, several pharma companies have investigated this, and found it to be a real result.
Alon seems to have most active and have developed topical agonists that are unable to work systemically and so do not have central effects.
see US patent 6664286 (2003)

I personally think that terrence is totally wrong when it comes to psilocybian mushrooms or other psychedelics offering an advantage to hunter gatherers, psychedelics tend to impair the 'ignore the mundane' screening that goes on. so tripping hunter gatherers would be busy admiring the beauty of the leaves and the very nice stripes that the sabre tooth tiger had as it sneaked up, then the amazing white teeth as they became tiger food. iboga is the only psychedelic I am aware of which has been used to help hunting. In cultures where psychedlics are available they are not usually used for hunting.

V
 
^interesting about the eye pressure

about mckenna, we're not talking about doses that cause you to trip, we're talking about small doses at just the right level for clearer vision but barely threshold mentally
 
qwe said:
^interesting about the eye pressure

about mckenna, we're not talking about doses that cause you to trip, we're talking about small doses at just the right level for clearer vision but barely threshold mentally
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Ah,
still I think it is interesting that most of the cultures with ready access to hallucinogens do not traditionally use them for hunting, certainly not into the age of the anthropologist, warfare on the other hand seems to be a common use for hallucinogens the 'fierce tribes' of the amazon basin were regularly documented as using DMT 5MeODMT snuffs before battle.
 
Isn't gaba-d or something responsible for edge detection in the eyeball? If someone was gonna look into this they could test those levels and actually have some physical evidence for one way or the other.
 
I think there are GABA-C type receptors in the retina. They are similar to GABA-A receptors (i.e. they are ionotropic), but are made from their own specific myriad of subunit proteins. Does anyone know if selective GABA-C agonists/antagonists have any particular qualitative effects in humans?
 
Well psych's in general at low doses i suppose do this somewhat depending on which one though - but DMT especially, and also low doses of psilocin/cybin/4-AcO-DMT ,

I'm really curious i know there's just gotta be a lot more to some of these substances, DMT (try it yourself, low dose*) seems to 'reduce energy use' in the brain to detail (more 'basic' gemometry, in a way..) and i'm much more coordinated in other ways, my eyes can focus from near, to far, VERY fast.

Same with low doses of psilocin/aco-dmt, but.... anything but a -DMT of the tryptamines and it helps zilch.

2C-TFM (pure, not the batch sold that was about 50% mixed with 2c-i) low doses, suprisingly did the same thing but in a different way, while no other 2c-x has done this, increased fluidity, really seems like a 'nootropic' at like 1mg or less.

*-DMT whatever reasons.. baffles my mind how people can't tell the huge difference between the *-DMT's and things like *-MiPT or -DET or whatever.
 
I think serotonin has the characteristic of enhancing light sensing abilities. Isn't it amazing how enhanced white light is on serotogenic psychedelics? It's crazy to think about how you can see the whole spectrum of light (rainbows) on them. Pupil dilation allows a lot more light to get in.

I swear i've been able to see perfectly in the pitch dark when peaking on high doses of MDMA . I was in a room and for brief moments I had night vision.Just something to think about.
 
nice, lots if ideas. im not sure how psychedelics react with the actuall eye, but i would guess it has more to do with clearer vision than just your own perception of things. mj works physically with the occular nerve and relaxes it. giving both a better view of things(i guess if you were deficient in that way) and also slowing or stopping damage due to pressure in the case of glaucoma.
 
yoyoman said:
Well psych's in general at low doses i suppose do this somewhat depending on which one though - but DMT especially, and also low doses of psilocin/cybin/4-AcO-DMT ,

I'm really curious i know there's just gotta be a lot more to some of these substances, DMT (try it yourself, low dose*) seems to 'reduce energy use' in the brain to detail (more 'basic' gemometry, in a way..) and i'm much more coordinated in other ways, my eyes can focus from near, to far, VERY fast.

Same with low doses of psilocin/aco-dmt, but.... anything but a -DMT of the tryptamines and it helps zilch.

2C-TFM (pure, not the batch sold that was about 50% mixed with 2c-i) low doses, suprisingly did the same thing but in a different way, while no other 2c-x has done this, increased fluidity, really seems like a 'nootropic' at like 1mg or less.

*-DMT whatever reasons.. baffles my mind how people can't tell the huge difference between the *-DMT's and things like *-MiPT or -DET or whatever.
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I'm interested in your "reduce energy use" observations. I was diagnosed a couple of years ago with ADHD and when my medications are working properly I find that focusing on words on a page requires much less energy. There is probably no scientific relationship, but I wonder if anyone has noticed this kind of parallel in subjective effects between disparate classes of drugs. I'm not trying to hijack the thread, by the way.
 
psychedelic= mind manifesting

not only does it increase visual acuity but many other psrts of the mind
 
There is also the possibility (in my thinking) some psychedelics may lower latent inhbition (thinking of this as a general concept)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_inhibition

Latent inhibition deals with the concept that your brain has a natural filter for all the information you are receiving from all your senses.

It makes sense if you think about it, right now your vision, hearing, touch, smell, etc are flooding your brain with information but to continue to go about your day you need to focus on that tasks at hand. So your brain naturally filters most of the information before you are aware of it. For example before you read this were you consciously thinking about the touch of your fingers to your computer keyboard - prob not you just routinely filter out once you've experienced it and it becomes irrelevant to what your current task is and you only return to analysing information like this when prompted or required.

There are many different variations on this theory for example some say it may explain the different between genius and schizophrenic. Both may have low latent inhibition - filtering less information than the average person but one has the ability to decode and make use of the information the other gets overwhelmed and psychotic. Schizophrenia is such a complex illness though I don't think you can simplify it down to this one theory.

I definately agree with F&B though as well, facial recognition is what humans do best. Most people don't realise how automatic and subconscious recognising a face is, there are parts of the brain that constantly look for faces and there have been many reports of stroke victims loosing the ability to recognise a face but see everything else as normal.
 
Hallucinations on mushrooms, LSD, DMT and other tryptamines seem to feel like very rapid eye wobbles/movemenrt, like R.E.M.. but the eye muscles seem to be moving in a certain patternistic way causing certain hallucinations, but not all. hard to explain!
 
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Cool thread, please keep it open as I just found it on the web looking to see if there was any info on the same topic.

I can't speak in regards to mushrooms as it's been too long but with cactus I have noticed that my night vision or ability to stargaze is enhanced quite dramatically, at least doubled. There are twice as many stars in the sky and the ones that I can usually see are twice as bright and the amount of moving objects I have been able to make out the last couple of times has really floored me. I guess these have been satelites or asteroids as they don't behave erratically or deviate from their fligh-paths but to be able to see so many when usually you're lucky to see one is amazing. One time I was even able to make out a shooting-star dropping to earth, visible as a faint glowing red orb after it's initial sideways flash across the sky had finished. The slowing down of time affect that psychedelics produce was really obvious in this instance and made this possible I believe as usually it would all have happened much too fast.

So if anyone is in or able to find a piece of the countryside where there are no city lights some time, please check this out as I would love for someone to concur with me.
 
The way psychedelics act on the V1 part of the visual cortex is to effectively lower the threshold for a neurone to fire, but this is also related to whether an adjacent neurone has/is firing (inhibits adjacent firing, increases firing if more distant neurones. Put those criteria into a computer to simulate increased firing/inhibition of neurones & you get geometric shapes forming. Now add in the info being fed into the V1 area (from the eye) as well as random firing of individual neurones & voila, you CEV animated trip patterning.

Now considering the structure of just about everything in nature can generally be traced back to very simple mathamatical algorhythms (fractal spiral of shell, hexagonal pattern of honeycombs etc), you're just increasing the overall ability of the V1 to generate those common shapes, which when fed to the part of the brain responsible for pattern recognition & interpretation makes vision seem more acute. This will, in a certain percentage of instances result in misidentification, but you'd never realize it was an incorrect interpretation unless you get close up to it to compare (& in all honesty, how many times have you done that while under the influence?)

Overall, the effect of psychedelics is probably something akin to how photomultipliers (in night vision goggles etc) work. Sometimes multiplying up the odd stray photon means that you end up seeinmg something that isn't there (but in incredible detail!)
 
Splatt said:
Hallucinations on mushrooms, LSD, DMT and other tryptamines seem to feel like very rapid eye wobbles/movemenrt, like R.E.M.. but the eye muscles seem to be moving in a certain patternistic way causing certain hallucinations, but not all. hard to explain!
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I don't really get nystagmus from tryptamines myself. Though I think DMT makes my eyes roll back in my head....8)
 
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