What Strange Sensory / Perceptual Issues Have You Experienced?

[lee954]

I've got Asperger's syndrome and experience some rather strange and confusing sensory perception problems.

If parallel horizontal lines are too close together I see them as moving in a wave-like motion...vertical lines don't cause me any problems at all.

I perceive colours differently depending on what other colours they are next to; thus I perceive movement where there is none there.

Someone can be standing right next to me and I can't separate out their voice from the background noise, yet I can clearly hear every word that someone is saying at the other end of the street.

I'm aware that there's a condition called 'synaesthesia' which has even stranger symptoms - somehow a person's senses are cross-wired.

So, I'm wondering what unusual symptoms or experiences do you have which might be considered to be Fortean, and possibly could be linked to certain Fortean phenomena?

 

[Cochise]

I was born with no sight in one eye. A psychologist once told be that this would affect my reasoning and perception as the eyes are linked to different sides of the brain and I would have everything filtered by the right side of the brain before it reached the left.

I don't know if there is truth in this, but I do find that my mental processes are quite different to many people. I work in computer programming and system design and we expose a lot of the way we solve problems to each other - I don't do it the same way as any others I've met, nor do others seem comfortable with my methods, though they seem perfectly logical to me.

I've also had quite a lot of mildly Fortean experinces in my life, mostly before I was 30. Maybe there is a connection.

But maybe not - I'm not entirely convinced that psychologists know what they are talking about either .

The eye thing affected my life in ways quite unconnected with whether I could see out of it, the absence of sight having been far less of a problem than the attempts to fix it.

I spent significant parts of my life prior to the age of 12 in hospital (in an adult eye ward most of the time), and of course had to go to school with an eye patch or - eventually when the attempt to restore sight failed - an empty eye socket until I could be fitted with a prosthesis. The socket kept producing scar tissue, and at one stage was thought to be cancerous - or at least, they tried to stop it with the radiotherapy that used to be used to try and burn out cancer. It was only when I was in the third year seniors that the eye socket was finally sorted to the point where I could wear a prosthesis and look relatively normal, although of course everyone at school knew about it by then and I still had to put up with things like 'Cochise is a one-eyed b,,,,,' graffiti.

Going to school with an obvious difference attracts unwelcome attention from the idiots who can't bear anything out of the normal. I found if all else fails going utterly apeshit aginst your oppressors tends to scare them off, even if it means that one gets the blame for the ruckus back on oneself (you should have gone to tell a master - yes, sure, that'd have worked).

I also had marvellous parents, whose only fault was perhaps not getting some second opinions on whether all the operations were necessary or likely to succeed. My dad in particular suffered real pain as operation after operation produced negative results - I can see him now trying his best to look cheerful in order to keep me positive, but not really managing it.

So I guess this odd upbringing could have as much to do with me being non-standard as anything to do with brain connections.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Someone can be standing right next to me and I can't separate out their voice from the background noise, yet I can clearly hear every word that someone is saying at the other end of the street.

I am starting to have this problem too. In my case, it might be selective frequency deafness - I used to have very good hearing. Mind you, in a pub or other noisy environment it has always been difficult for me to hear conversation...making it difficult for me to have a proper social life.

 

[SHAYBARSABE]

Someone can be standing right next to me and I can't separate out their voice from the background noise, yet I can clearly hear every word that someone is saying at the other end of the street.

I am starting to have this problem too. In my case, it might be selective frequency deafness - I used to have very good hearing. Mind you, in a pub or other noisy environment it has always been difficult for me to hear conversation...making it difficult for me to have a proper social life.

Mushy hearing in crowds is normal, but does get worse as we age.

That said, however, picking up a voice depends on the voice frequency. Someone a distance away might be audible because you happen to hear best in the frequency that voice produces.

I'm partially deaf -- precisely to the frequencies normal to the human voice. Makes me wonder about my family, I can tell you.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Seeing one thing in terms of another is often viewed with approval but only within certain designated spheres: poetry for instance.

I always find it slightly disconcerting when I read writings by "psychiatric cases" whose rants seem to make a certain sense at the poetic level.

To take an obvious example, James Tilley Matthews, the first "mad" person to be studied closely, wrote of the Air-Loom Gang, a group of evil-doers who operated a fantastic persecuting machine. Yet they had been called into being by the ordinary word Heirloom, meaning an object handed down. Even so, Matthews was using the word with a strange analytic cunning since Loom originally meant Tool, a usage he was probably aware of, before it became fixed to the weaving instrument.

We get therefore an object suspended, as he was, between usages.

It must be a hindrance to find this mode of thinking cannot be turned off. :?

 

[tamyu]

The example of thinking with the symbolic meanings of words sounds very much like the brain dealing with a non-native language.
In foreign language acquisition, particularly after a certain level of proficiency, you start to see similar patterns. A word forms a link to something that it would not to a native speaker, and remains that way even after the speaker is fluent in the other language. Some of these connections go back to the native language, some to differences in acquisition, and some are internalized methods to help remember words.
You end up with both native and non-native speakers knowing the meaning of the word but taking completely different routes to arrive at that meaning. If you take a step back in the route, as is often done in poetry and comedy, the routes are so different as to not make quite as much (if any) sense to the other group.

Cochise, if you don't mind, I would like to hear a bit more about your one-eyed amazingness.
My own son is virtually blind in one eye (he can see vague bits of light and some color, but only if the good eye is covered), and I am wondering what sort of effects it will have on life, if any. I hear it is quite different to be born with sight in only one eye than it is to lose it later.

 

[Cochise]

Sorry for a second long post, everyone.

Tamyu, I could only see light in my bad eye, and then only with the good eye covered. That is, if the doctor shone a light straight in my bad eye, I could tell if it was there or not. I had no focussing ability in that eye at all.

Hopefully your son looks normal and won't be bullied. My eyes were different colours (the bad one was blue with a yellowy 'white' the normal one brown), so I always looked odd even when I wasn't wearing a patch.

I too believe it is quite different to losing an eye later in life, although of course I have no idea what two-eyed sight looks like. As I said in my original ramblings it really is only a minor handicap compared to what some people have to suffer - in my case it was the whole operation/school etc experience that probably had more impact on me rather than the different sight. Whether there is any truth in my psycholgist friend's assertions about brain 'sidedness' I can't say, but if there is then that would be an obvious difference between having at one time had binary vision and being a 'cyclops' from birth.

My depth perception is certainly different to normal although it functions well enough that I drive, ride motorcycles etc. I take great care to have rear view mirrors well postioned because of course my field of vision is restricted on the blind side - the smaller nose your son has the better! I can see perspective errors in paintings that others don't see.

The biggest problem I have is with moving ball games such as tennis and cricket - I can't follow the ball when it gets within a couple of feet as the speed seems to defeat my depth perception. There is a technical reason for this, its the distance where the cross over from the two eyes is the most important in judging distance. Can't head a football for the same reason. So I took up archery where having one eye is a positive advantage (probably applies to all kinds of shooting). I did have to learn to do it left handed, because its my left eye that's good. So it'll be better if you son's good eye is the same side as his strong hand.

There are some minor oddities - you think your natural 'centre' is through the good eye which causes minor positioning and balance problems. And some annoyances - you will find great inconsistencies (well if you were in the UK you would) in which jobs and institutions regard it at a handicap and which don't. For example, I can't get a job anywhere on the railways because I might have to go on the track and then I might not see an oncoming train, but on the other hand the state does not regard it as any handicap when it comes to crossing the road, driving a 36 ton lorry, etc.

The best advice I would give to your son is look for the things he can do and excel at them and drop the ones he finds he can't do. I've often found that (as with driving) you just need to take a little extra care compared to the binocular folk. My parents tried to shelter me and I simply ended up going out on a limb to prove I could do (most things) as well or better than anyone else. Another one-eyed aquaintance of mine builds and flies autogyros.

I'm assuming his problem can't be fixed, of course - if it can he will probably be able to tell me what differences he sees . Good luck to him and you.

 

[OneWingedBird]

I always find it slightly disconcerting when I read writings by "psychiatric cases" whose rants seem to make a certain sense at the poetic level.

That kind of stuff is very odd, almost deliberatly incongruent at times, but as you say, almost with some kind of symbolic or wordplay behind it once you get into thinking about it.

A schizophrenic guy who used to visit my friend's shop used to bang on at her about a conspiracy involving Jesus Christ, Cassius Clay and Scooby Doo, which always seemed pretty random, although now that i get into thinking about it, Cassius Clay was also Mohammed, which gives us two prophets, and iirc the trouble over The Satanic Verses a few years back was a wordplay that turned Mohammed into Mahound (my dog), which brings us back to Scooby.

Probably i am grasping there and really he just imagined Daphne had shagged all 3 of them.

 

[escargot]

I've seen the video.

 

[OneWingedBird]

And you a vicars daughter. :lol:

 

[liveinabin]

This does seem to have drifted rather from the original question somewhat but I just wanted to drop this in here:
I spent about 6 years working in an opticians and I was surprised at the number of people who we would see who were blind in one eye. I would see about ten patients a day, 5 days a week. I think I would average about 5 patients a week who were blind in one eye.
Far more common than most people seem to think.

 

[tamyu]

I also feel a bit bad for pushing this so far off topic...
But it could be worse, I suppose.

In my son's case, he lost vision in one eye due to severe ROP - not due to a defect - so it looks completely normal. Or, well, very close to normal. If you pay close attention, his eye is just slightly off center. The retina detached most of the way, and now the eye centers with the tiny bit that is functional in the middle.

We have opted not to mess with it. A relatively normal looking eye with poor functionality is better than a completely normal looking eye with no functionality, or even worse - losing the eye due to complications. The doctor has been pushing us toward surgery to fix the "lazy" eye, but I really cannot see a good reason to do so. Unless you pay very close attention (or look for a long time at photos) you don't notice that it is a bit off center. Why risk losing the eye for someone so superficial and cosmetic?
We have been told there is a procedure that can potentially restore some level of vision, but it is a 75% failure rate, with half of the failures losing the eye altogether. We'll pass on that one.

The most obvious is that the eye doesn't go "red" in camera shots with flash. There is no reflection, or a very strong reflection from the wrong angle. This is usually what tips people off to something being odd, and I have been told several times by other concerned parents that they saw on the news or read about that being a sign of brain cancer and that I need to get him to the doctor right away.

As far as I can tell, he doesn't haves any balance issues... But getting a haircut or photos taken is always an odd challenge as "looking straight ahead" means lining the good eye at center - which is definitely not "straight ahead".
I had figured his poor ability at ball games was related to the vision issue - he is terrible at catching balls - but hadn't really given much thought to exactly why. Will definitely look into archery, as it is something he is already interested in (unfortunately there aren't any classes for children in our area, so will have to look a bit further afield).

As for it being classified as a disability or not - in Japan it is the same way. The loss of an eye is not officially a disability, while the loss of a finger apparently is. Seems a bit silly as having only one eye would change life a bit more than losing a pinky would...
I don't really know how policies are for driving, but we are lucky enough to live in an area where he could probably go through life without ever needing to drive anyway, so it isn't a huge concern at this point.

I am incredibly frustrated by the focus put on 3D these days, and having to watch him explain to friends (and their parents!) that, no, he cannot watch the 3D television because one eye is "dim"... And the inevitable sadness that follows from being left out.

 

[Cochise]

Apologies again - originally I was just trying to draw attention to my acquantance's theory that being one-eyed would affect the thought processes (and presumably also the perception of some types of Fortean phenomena).

 

[melon24]

Not sure if this is the right thread to drop this into (I searched) but last few years I have often had the strange feeling when stirring a cup of tea that the spoon hits the bottom of the cup before it should do. Madly enough, I have even compared the depth of the spoon to the outside of the cup and the spoon seems as though it should go into the cup further than it actually does, even taking into account the depth of the base of the cup. With getting older and now needing glasses to read the small stuff, I wondered if my perception of depth is changing and is not on 'automatic' anymore. It is a strange feeling when it happens. Early signs of something more sinister maybe? Like to know if anyone else has had this?

Editing this to say that autism is fairly rife in my family and I would think I am on that spectrum also, although I believe that most people have a few traits.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Not sure if this is the right thread to drop this into (I searched) but last few years I have often had the strange feeling when stirring a cup of tea that the spoon hits the bottom of the cup before it should do. Madly enough, I have even compared the depth of the spoon to the outside of the cup and the spoon seems as though it should go into the cup further than it actually does, even taking into account the depth of the base of the cup. With getting older and now needing glasses to read the small stuff, I wondered if my perception of depth is changing and is not on 'automatic' anymore. It is a strange feeling when it happens. Early signs of something more sinister maybe? Like to know if anyone else has had this?

Editing this to say that autism is fairly rife in my family and I would think I am on that spectrum also, although I believe that most people have a few traits.

I would say get it checked out. It might be a depth perception problem or an astigmatism, or it could just be your imagination.

 

[melon24]

....could you expand on the imagination bit?

 

[Mythopoeika]

....could you expand on the imagination bit?

Well...is it just a feeling you have, or have you tested this time and again? If it's a repeatable thing, then it's not something you just imagined.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I've got Asperger's syndrome and experience some rather strange and confusing sensory perception problems.

If parallel horizontal lines are too close together I see them as moving in a wave-like motion...vertical lines don't cause me any problems at all.

I perceive colours differently depending on what other colours they are next to; thus I perceive movement where there is none there.

Someone can be standing right next to me and I can't separate out their voice from the background noise, yet I can clearly hear every word that someone is saying at the other end of the street. ...

It's difficult to determine whether or to what extent the visual effects are directly related to an Asperger's diagnosis, because ...

On the one hand, visual perception strangeness is a known effect associated with Asperger's, particularly if the effects are correlated with viewing small fine-grained details or features (as you describe with respect to the horizontal lines).

On the other hand, some optical illusions anyone can see are based on presenting parallel lines or adjacent colors. There are optical illusions that produce vibration or jittering of the sort you mention.

The same ambiguity applies to the auditory effects you mention.

On the one hand, auditory perception strangeness is a known effect associated with Asperger's.

On the other hand, some folks are simply better than others at 'focusing in' on one sound source amidst a number of sources. Furthermore, the acoustics of a particular scene can result in hearing distant sound sources more clearly than sources close to you.

 

[EnolaGaia]

... With getting older and now needing glasses to read the small stuff, I wondered if my perception of depth is changing and is not on 'automatic' anymore. It is a strange feeling when it happens. Early signs of something more sinister maybe? Like to know if anyone else has had this?

Editing this to say that autism is fairly rife in my family and I would think I am on that spectrum also, although I believe that most people have a few traits.

It could simply be 'par for the course' ...

An addition of, or significant change in, corrective lenses will affect your depth perception. If the change is great enough it can literally distort things in a near-psychedelic manner.

When I was a kid finally diagnosed as so myopic as to be legally blind, my annual prescription updates never failed to screw up my depth perception for a day or two. Climbing the stairs to the optometrist / optician offices was no problem with the old prescription. The new lenses invariably distorted my depth perception to the point the floor seemed to recede around my feet as if I were perched atop a giant ball or sphere, and I couldn't even walk down the corridor without someone holding my arm.

Another factor with aging is that the ocular apparatus that controls the eye's focus becomes slower to respond, and this can affect depth perception.

... But on the other hand (since you mentioned the subject) ...

Problems with depth perception are a known effect associated with Asperger's Syndrome, which is now considered a particular level or set of issues within the autistic spectrum. In a similar vein, Asperger's is known to be sometimes associated with hand / eye coordination and motor coordination, including spatial orientation. I mention this because the apparent discrepancy between depth seen and depth felt could be an example of such hand / eye weirdness affecting spatial perception.

 

[melon24]

Well...is it just a feeling you have, or have you tested this time and again? If it's a repeatable thing, then it's not something you just imagined.

Thanks Mytho - No its not imagined. It is a definite feeling / perception I have had many times over the last few years and I just wondered if anyone else had experienced it or heard of it being a part of the slow lead in to old age, along with needing glasses and not being able to jump out of a sitting position, not being able to crouch down to retreive stuff of the floor very easily and .... ooh the tons of other things in decline.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I was born with no sight in one eye. A psychologist once told be that this would affect my reasoning and perception as the eyes are linked to different sides of the brain and I would have everything filtered by the right side of the brain before it reached the left. ...

The fact that this situation dates from birth would mean your brain development was consistently situated to attune itself to the availability of a single ('mono', so to speak) visual input. My point is that you were 'tuned for mono reception' from the beginning, and your neural setup hasn't been disrupted or overturned by losing one eye's sight later in life. Having to shift to one-eyed vision as an adult can be confusing and disorienting.

The psychologist was correct in pointing out you'd be relying on only one hemisphere's visual processing. I wouldn't think there'd be a significant 'left brain versus right brain' difference on as basic a function as vision processing. On the other hand, there could well be a hemispheric-induced effect on how you 'conceive what you perceive'.

 

[melon24]

It could simply be 'par for the course' ...

An addition of, or significant change in, corrective lenses will affect your depth perception. If the change is great enough it can literally distort things in a near-psychedelic manner.

When I was a kid finally diagnosed as so myopic as to be legally blind, my annual prescription updates never failed to screw up my depth perception for a day or two. Climbing the stairs to the optometrist / optician offices was no problem with the old prescription. The new lenses invariably distorted my depth perception to the point the floor seemed to recede around my feet as if I were perched atop a giant ball or sphere, and I couldn't even walk down the corridor without someone holding my arm.

Wow, definitely a little psychedelic!

Another factor with aging is that the ocular apparatus that controls the eye's focus becomes slower to respond, and this can affect depth perception.

... But on the other hand (since you mentioned the subject) ...

Problems with depth perception are a known effect associated with Asperger's Syndrome, which is now considered a particular level or set of issues within the autistic spectrum. In a similar vein, Asperger's is known to be sometimes associated with hand / eye coordination and motor coordination, including spatial orientation. I mention this because the apparent discrepancy between depth seen and depth felt could be an example of such hand / eye weirdness affecting spatial perception.

I wonder if an autistic brain getting older shows some very different effects?

(On a side note, this board is fairly responsible for various of my family members seeking diagnosis. A reply by PeniG to a post about my (then) young son having re-developed night terrors, suggesting that this could be indicative of autism, made me research the subject and indeed my son was diagnosed with Asperger's a few years later, leading to other family members recognising their own traits!)

 

[EnolaGaia]

... I wonder if an autistic brain getting older shows some very different effects? ...

I don't know. There isn't a lot of data on long-term aging effects with ASD / Asperger's.

 

[ChristLionQC]

One particular antidepressant (Venlafaxine I think, but I can't be sure as I've been through the dance card over the years) had a very strange side-effect - when I woke up in the morning, but before I opened my eyes, I could 'see' the bedroom around me, and when I did open my eyes, even after having moved my head to 'look' round, there would only be a very small shift in register if any.

Obviously all done by memory, as proved by walking straight into my wife's suitcase one morning when I tried to get up and about without opening my eyes, but odd how this was prompted only by the one version of that class of anti-depressants. Did somewhat warily mention it to the psychiatrist, and just got a shoulder shrug and "Yeah, I hear that a lot."

 

[Ermintruder]

but before I opened my eyes, I could 'see' the bedroom around me

This is fascinating, and it's made me suddenly realise: there have been in recent years some properly-scientific attempts to analyse and understand the reported phenomenon of OOBE during near-death episodes in hospitals.

If there are similar gnostic pseudophysical out-of-body remote vision episodes that can be induced via Venlafaxine (or indeed any pharmaceutical) why have these not been experimentally investigated?

Clearly, these could be lucid reimagining/recollections of the room beforehand, being re-remembered, but they just conceivably might somehow be something more (cf Doors of Perception).

So this must've been done- therefore why don't I know of it?