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Do blind people get psychadelic visions.

webbykevin

webbykevin

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Joined
Oct 29, 2010
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Would the inner visual lanscapes, geometric patters, coloured lightshows etc.. that appear when you have your eyes closed when under the influence of say magic mushrooms or dmt, would they be different for a blind person who has never actually seen an aztec patters say or a praying mantice or an elf or anything.
 
Someone on the shroomery made a thread about this, I also asked about it. A guy pm'd me saying they gave a dose of LSD to their blind friend (blind from birth) and he said he could see colour, however he could not say which colour he was seeing.

Pretty magnificent huh?
 
illuz1oN said:
Someone on the shroomery made a thread about this, I also asked about it. A guy pm'd me saying they gave a dose of LSD to their blind friend (blind from birth) and he said he could see colour, however he could not say which colour he was seeing.

Pretty magnificent huh?
Click to expand...

What I don't understand is how a blind person, who had no basis of color, can "see" color.

Truly fascinating
 
I guess it would depend on why they are blind in the first place.. wether it be the eyes or the brain, then still what part of the brain.
 
Well, in illuz1oNs post he said the guy was blind from birth. So he would have no basis of color at all. And any shapes he "saw" would be manifested from what he felt with his hands
 
Sight is not optical

There's an interesting study I saw the lead author give a lecture on about a year ago where sighted people were blindfolded for 5 days, never allowed to take the blind fold off. Another group was allowed to take the blindfold off for a half hour a day. Both were taught braille reading during this time but only the always blindfolded group learned how to read it at all. Moreover, only in the always blindfolded group did fMRIs reveal activation of the visual cortex while braille reading.

This suggests that the visual cortex is capable of being recruited by other sense modalities other than sight via non-optical routes (esp. somatosensation and audition) -- but the optical signal connection is so much stronger that even just a half hour of seeing per day obliterates any signal pathway changes being made to incorporate touch -- which is why the half hour off per day blindfolded group didn't learn any braille, because their sense of touch could not recruit the visual cortex to help "visualize" the braille non-optically.

There was another case of a blind nun (blind due to damage to her eyes), who was an extremely fast braille reader. But the poor women incurred a stroke later in life that mostly only damaged her visual cortex. From then on she was unable to read braille!

So I'd be surprised if blind people with working visual cortexes don't visualize things using other senses, with or without psychedelics. For example, the blind often report feeling an extremely enhanced sense of space when it rains because of the "surround sound". I imagine psychedelics would make these non-optical visualizations more vivid as well as cause lots of synesthesia-like cross over between non-optical visualizations.
 
I find this all very fascinating, It makes me wonder just how much of the psychadelic experience is based on the visuals, when I think about it, the visual aspect is a huge part of what I experience when tripping and this seems to lead to most of the other reactions I have, for example, on mushrooms or lsd it's the things I see that get me thinking, that get me fascinated, the other body load experiences are actually pretty minimal once you mentally try and remove the visuals from your memory of the experience, increased heartrate, that rushing feeling, and Ok a lot of inner reflecting on acid for sure but the visuals do seem to me to be such a huge part of the experience.

More research needed I'm sure.
 
Yeah, i have read many times that color blind individuals have experienced color for the first time after taking psychedelics.

As mentioned, it must depend on the mechanism of blindness.
 
psood0nym said:
There's an interesting study I saw the lead author give a lecture on about a year ago where sighted people were blindfolded for 5 days, never allowed to take the blind fold off. Another group was allowed to take the blindfold off for a half hour a day. Both were taught braille reading during this time but only the always blindfolded group learned how to read it at all. Moreover, only in the always blindfolded group did fMRIs reveal activation of the visual cortex while braille reading.

This suggests that the visual cortex is capable of being recruited by other sense modalities other than sight via non-optical routes (esp. somatosensation and audition) -- but the optical signal connection is so much stronger that even just a half hour of seeing per day obliterates any signal pathway changes being made to incorporate touch -- which is why the half hour off per day blindfolded group didn't learn any braille, because their sense of touch could not recruit the visual cortex to help "visualize" the braille non-optically.

There was another case of a blind nun (blind due to damage to her eyes), who was an extremely fast braille reader. But the poor women incurred a stroke later in life that mostly only damaged her visual cortex. From then on she was unable to read braille!

So I'd be surprised if blind people with working visual cortexes don't visualize things using other senses, with or without psychedelics. For example, the blind often report feeling an extremely enhanced sense of space when it rains because of the "surround sound". I imagine psychedelics would make these non-optical visualizations more vivid as well as cause lots of synesthesia-like cross over between non-optical visualizations.
Click to expand...

Totally. The sensorium we experience consciously cannot be compartmentalized in to specific pieces of the brain as modern neuroscience would have us beleive. The 'reality' is experienced by far more than just the common sense organs we think of; eastern theosophy has been on to this one for millenia.

Ask a Yogi!
 
How sweet would this be if it could exist in the future: Imagine having a cap on that records every single firing of every single neuron in your brain for x amount of time. Then imagine having a means of copying this "clip" and inducing it into somebody else's mind, allowing them to replicate the exact series of events as experienced by the previous user.
This would allow us to know exactly what it's like to be blind, schizophrenic, mentally disabled, criminally insane, ANYTHING.
It would also however be used immorally no doubt, for extraction...
 
Raven SWE said:
How sweet would this be if it could exist in the future: Imagine having a cap on that records every single firing of every single neuron in your brain for x amount of time. Then imagine having a means of copying this "clip" and inducing it into somebody else's mind, allowing them to replicate the exact series of events as experienced by the previous user.
This would allow us to know exactly what it's like to be blind, schizophrenic, mentally disabled, criminally insane, ANYTHING.
It would also however be used immorally no doubt, for extraction...
Click to expand...

Wow!:) I haven't read this thread before now, but I was thinking about exactly the same concept while tripping few hours ago.

Imagine the masses being bored of all sorts of love<3. Personally, I'd like to feel a record of a dying brain.

Very cyberpunk concept. Did someone already wrote a story? (It's very similar to Michael Swanwick's "Vacuum Flowers" / "Trojan Horse", but still different).
 
Never heard anyone touch on that concept, I thought of it while reading this thread :)
Since real sensation could be simulated, I would love to feel what a female orgasm is like..
 
Don't know how many of you guys have seen things 'with your mind's eye', such as something vision-like or like a dream-movie... but I find that only partially comparable to optical vision. (It is much more boundless, just like imagination is 'infinite') and yet there is a distinct relation with optical vision.

I would bet that most blind people are able to get forms of synaesthesia, but that it has more meaning or value if the part of the brain that controls vision has ever been naturally stimulated.
Meaning: it should help if the person has ever seen in his life.

If a person has never seen anything in his life than these effects might just be experienced as ununderstandable phenomena just like trips commonly produce in people who are not blind at all! As if there were a lava lamp of energy in your head, shifting energy but not associated with every-day experiences. Rather indifferentiated activity.

Thirdly there might be people who have perfectly healthy eyes and optical nerves but neurological problems or who suffer from brain damage after an accident. If the part of the brain is messed up that manages colors and forms and basically all visionary processing then I don't think psychedelics can do much to change that.

Of course there are always other systems like proprioception, it's all so complex and I don't even know a fraction of this stuff... but if those people still have properly functioning proprioception they still can "see" themselves positioned in space/ in the world and that could get warped by psychedelics.

So I think a simple "yes" or "no" could not be given as answer.
 
^ Yeah, when I trip with my eyes closed I can sometimes be on the edge of mental / visual hallucinations. So sometimes I'm seeing things with my mind's eye, but with enough focus and concentration I can switch to my real eyes. Very interesting
 
And what to think of the totally intense experiences where it doesn't matter whether you close your eyes or not!
 
allium said:
Wow!:) I haven't read this thread before now, but I was thinking about exactly the same concept while tripping few hours ago.

Imagine the masses being bored of all sorts of love<3. Personally, I'd like to feel a record of a dying brain.

Very cyberpunk concept. Did someone already wrote a story? (It's very similar to Michael Swanwick's "Vacuum Flowers" / "Trojan Horse", but still different).
Click to expand...
It's also a concept employed in the movie "Strange Days". It's been since 1999 that I saw it, but if I recall correctly a serial killer uses these devices that can record experience or even transmit it between people in real time (like during sex). He makes his victims wear it and transmits his experience into them as he tortures and kills them so they feel him getting off to killing them while they watch their own body and simultaneously feel their own terror and pain.

And yes, the female orgasm thing is covered in it, too. Tech dealers in the movie sell experiences of women masturbating or being fucked to men, experiences of robbing a bank, falling to one's death, etc.
 
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