some questions on phosphene activity and psychedelics

[qwe]

ever since i was a kid, if i go into a dark environment and don't get too involved in thinking, i start to notice more and more blobs of jelly. is this a phosphene show?

ever since trying psychedelics, they now aren't just blobs of faint color, but are bright and electric, with lots of "static" surrounding the blobs (i also now notice the static, where before only faintly in a dark room or a small quantity of static-dots but brightly lit when looking into the sky) now after trying psychedelics i see static in lit rooms on almost everything, and see it especially pronounced when in a dimly lit room or dark room.

i don't mind the electric blobs, they only happen when i'm doing nothing and can't see anything. the static however is very annoying, especially when i think about how the less signal there is between a television and the channel, the more static there is (as if i see more static because the connection between my eyes and my mind are damaged)

my main question is, what causes the retina to send a visual signal other than light? how is this related to psychedelic chemicals (is it an attention thing, or an actual physical thing?) and if its an actual physical thing, why does it last after the trip in the case of HPPD?

 

[Riemann Zeta]

I get the electric-vision (usually always in blue, sometimes in yellow) when i close my eyes--I have since I was a small child. I also get the 'super-high-resolution' static, when, for example, running and looking at trees in the sun. The trees seem so 'high-res' (meaning I can see every little detail of each leaf, even from far distances), that it looks like they are "aliased." I don't really think that this is retinal processing (especially the closed-eye electric-vision), I think it is spontaneous activity in V1 and (possibly) post-striate areas.

 

[fastandbulbous]

There's something in one of BilZ0r's posts (I think) about computer simulations of sensetivity of neurones (in V1) to random firing due to changes of threshold, courtesy of LSD. They manages to generate a lot of basic geometric shapes common to LSD CEV's purely by slight alterations of rules (eg inhibit adjacent "neurones", but lower firing threshold for other close ones)

 

[BilZ0r]

Yeah, I had to stop hosting that paper, because it was so big. It's really a waste of time from any point of view but a mathamatician/neural net modler.

But yeah, the prevailing logic would indicate that HPPD is nothing to do with the retina (neither are hallucinations), the effect would come from some change in the nature of the brain.