Visual throbbing and audial compression: AS related?

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I'm posting this here because several pp interested in such subjects seem to be here..

I've only found one uncertain other person who may have experienced these two (in my experiences) related phenomena:

1) Vision becomes extremely focused, with the very center of sight dominating totally, and eventually, suddenly, the center 'throbs': as though the object (often a face) moves closer in one jerk and back again. Accompanied by a sense of release, of disembodiment, of projection and very deep nonverbal understanding. Symbolic and eternal.

2) Sound at first seems to speed up. Continuous sounds (such as a fan) help in bringing on the state: they seem to overlap themselves in urgency to arrive at perception, forming waves of higher density in intervals. Voices often sound angry or extremely rushed. If one gets far enough into it (hasn't happened since i was a wee one, but oh how i recall), all one's actions seem fast, jerky, impatient -- that's the word for the whole sound and eventually even proprioception.

I had this often as a child, when i'd concentrate, or when alone and was able to relax enough to really zone out (proto-meditation). It's highly enjoyable and feels like a deeper reality. Like something much less forced than the perceptual frame i usually use--full of anxiety and second-guessing as it is. In this, i believe there may be a connection to the profound AS-related difference in spatio-temporal perception. Repetition, pattern, fixation: all that makes a kind of sense to me in relation to what i feel is true about the world. Mantra, wave, rocking repetition and stims. This is perhaps not at all limited to AS experience--in fact we may just have easier access to a realm of psychology many of the ancients knew of. We may be the progeny.

Wait a minute. Both those two sound very much familiar to me. Especially the last one has seemed so strange and vague I could hardly put my finger on what was happening. It sounds similar to what I experience as hearing voices whispering (I can't make out words, rather only the hissing of whispering voices, which could even be the sound of the wind for all I know - internal impressions no doubt, though), very intense, shaky, and so vague they could almost be images rather than sound, or smell or taste, you see how vague it is. And while I have that sensation I inwardly most often see very vague impressions of something, could be stones, metal surfaces, something that's mostly flat or rough at least. These impressions fluctuate between being very smooth and more rough. I experienced this as a kid and only recently noticed it again when I am alone and in darkness.
You may not think this sounds like what you describe, but let me explain further: the time speeding up and down; I think I simply interpret that by means of these imprssions, in some synesthetic association form. The strongest impression is how the "voices" intensify and calm down. The smooth surfaces are in some way connected, because they are synched with the sounds.

And the first one I've experienced (I'm not so sure I interpret you correctly here, though) many times when I look at one point for a longer time. The peripheral view blurs out and the object in focus sort of glows intensely. A kind of meditative mindset, I woud say.

Hell yes. I had forgotten this aspect, and in fact your description moved me so much i was able to enter the state a little while reading.
Normal sounds sound like voices in a tantilizing way, tone and meaning through tone is incredibly distorted; i feel meaning in voice as a tangible object, something i'm rolling over like a ball pressed against the stomach.

Important thing here for me is the intense satisfaction involved; it seems that i should be frightened but i always remember feeling that i had sunk to the bottom of a pool after treading water and that i belonged there.


I guess i've got a different brand of synthesia, this feeling is more connected for me with bodily extension, balance, inner ear, spacial sense, and angles. Lord how much i think in angles and acceleration and skin pressures.



Exactly. But why do we interpret them as voices? Perhaps because we feel attracted to the pattern, as though we should be able to interpret the fluctuations, as though they have definite meaning... even i remember feeling (very young) that those tones of voice (often incredibly intense, impatient) were the deeper voices of reality itself.



Most certainly. Have you tried using a black point within a white circle within a black circle? I sit about 2 feet away or so, do breathing exercises to calm down, and then go at it. There are all kinds of levels. First the peripheral fadeout, then the throbbing, then it can speed up and reach such an intense frequency that i seem to hang between the two and lose most of my subjectivity. At that point a truly epic feeling can set in. The third eye location also usually feels a lot of pressure.

-- There's also this approach of understanding these kinds of visually orientated (rather than breath) concentration exercises, which you're probably familiar with (and could suggest modification to if you've experienced it) : subject/object; connection between subject/object; the seer, subject, and object; just the seer and seen; and just the seeing. I've not gotten to the last stage.




Mm, yes, darkness. I've also tried using a little LED light in the dark as a focal point, and that works nicely. Especially if you're too tired to meditate properly and tune out visual distractions.

With closed eyes, do you ever get feelings of spacial expansion? That you can sense and (very visually) 'see' the dimensions of the room? I usually feel like i'm reaching out the top back of my head, and seeing the 'true' space of the room, though i'm always aware that the distances i can feel are not what my eyesight would tell me. But i always have a deeper sense of commitment to the distances i can feel, and often feel released to sense the room distortedly. Often it begins by perceiving the door as an inch away when it is six feet or so. Sometimes i even feel that i'm projecting awareness to one corner.

Last edited by Oceanfloor on 08 Sep 2006, 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

this topic reminds me of the "white out" sensation i sometimes get during the day but mostley i get it at nite if its completely dark, if it happens to me during the day, it usually makes me laugh like you wouldn't believe.

..maybe i've had this...

Please explain more: do you see a completely white field of vision? When does it happen and how does it feel? Do your ears ring?

it feels like somethings moving when i close my eyes like its getting closer and farther from me exept its white, but it definitvely has a shape, it kindof feels like being inside of a lava lamp is the best way i can describe it. it use to scare me but now it doesn't really bother me anymore, my ears might have been ringing i don't remember. btw i love ears

#1, yes.
#2, I'm not sure, so probably not?

Yes, the speed up in time is what I call skiping a tick. A tick being a unit of internal time perception. At one moment I'm here at the next I two ticks later. Everything seems to jump forward for me but stands still for my outward percieved reality.

The sound is what I call hearing sunlight for lack of a better description. It is an all pervailing "white noise" that I hear when I tune into it. Sometimes it is steady and hissing, sometimes waves like un-UNNN-un-UNNN-un...and so on. I think it may actually be hearing what astronomers refer to as the universal backgroung radiation left over from the big-bang.

I see in the sky what I can only imagine are photons, not that I really know what one is. During the day they appear as clear small longated particles swimming about rapidly. At night, because they are not energized by the sun, I guess again, they become points of clear being less active and more diffuse. Although once in a while there may be a momentary flash.

And then there are the spontaneous splotches of blue, yellow, green and purples that appear anywhere anytime, although I have not be able to determine if they are mind sights or actually there.

I often see what I call the rip in space/time. At some distance from me an irrefularlly shaped "hole" opens. It is usually lined with bright white or gold color, but in the middle it appears very dark black. The black is not a color though, it is lack of anything. It is like a hole in my perception of reality opens and what is behind it is emptiness, no-thing, no even color.

Do not take these descriptions litterally, they are conceptual. I tried for a long time to put the right words to the visual and audible experiences but words and sentences fall short. Now, I only enjoy them as part of my normal experience.

A tick, eh?

Also, with respect to sightings of blue and yellow objects in bright sunlight, perhaps it could be Haidinger's Brush (http://www.polarization.com/haidinger/haidinger.html).


Given that the visual pathways (retina->lateral gesticulate nucleus->V1 area of the occipital lob of the cortex) do not seem to be affected in any significant way in people with ASDs the types of emergent hullucinatory images one might see should correspond to those of regular old humans and primates. As such, this video is an excellent introduction to the types of complex logarithmic mappings of data that exist between the retina and the visual cortex and how these mappings natually lead to certain conserved image types in hallucinatory perception.

Tick, I borowed the term from web browser games they advance in a certain time frame, usually 1 hour. They call them ticks so I figured my perception might follow that kind of pattern. The ticks I skip may be more than 3. I only say this because, as an example, someone walking in the distance seems to jump forward farther than he could walk in 3 seconds. But thats if the ticks you refer to are seconds. If they segments then I guess it could be any length of time.

My question is where or what was my conciousness doing during the pause?

The colors I see do not appear together. They are splotches of either one or the other and last only for a very short time.

now what about this sound thing? Any views on that?

Can you post some suggested readings, other links from a scientific point of view that may give me a clue as to what I experience? Or am I noticing something everybody sees/hears but just doesn't talk about because it is jsut a normal experience.

Thanks

Interesting thread.

I can definitely hear the sun, I have no doubts about it, but it sounds more like a fan running than white noise. There is quite a bit of low frequency content, whereas white noise is 'equalized' for equal energy between all freqs. I can't sleep during the day because of the sound and it doesn't seem to matter whether I'm in direct sunlight or deep inside a building in a closet, the sound is almost the same. If the sun's up, I hear it so I don't believe what I perceive is the universe's 'background noise'.

It doesn't make hearing any more difficult, it just adds a background noise to everything I hear, like a radio station slightly off with the music signal still louder and clearer than the noise.

I sometimes get the time skip thing, but they are always extremely short in duration, not like a 3 second skip, but just similar to bad editing in a movie. I sometimes wonder if there could be such a thing as a micro-siezure or maybe like when your computer almost crashes, but it recovers with a blink on the screen. It's my mind's way of resetting after some error is detected and shunted.

Hmmm Sounds like some people have been dropping Acid here!! !

yes, thats the sound. I call it white noise because I dont know about the frequency thing....it's the same concept. Great description about the radio station. I wonder if this is what SETI people are tuning into?

Again, great description of the tick thing. Maybe it is a Glitch or bug in my operating system.


can u describe they sky you see?

Scrapheap, your icon is fine.

I was playing pool one time and the ball slowed down, froze, and then came back to normality. I had no awareness of other aspects of the environment.
While sitting in the back seat of a van driving down the freeway I witnessed a plane freeze in the sky. I was also aware of my environment. I ruled out relative motion and perceptions. It is still unexplained to me.

Could you describe they sky you see?

3) Ticks:

This opens up another aspect of the sound distortion i initially described. I've realized since posting this that it is possibly the culmination or falling into the full state of something which often occurs to me: a delay in perception of perception, in which data is stored for a few seconds and experienced later--more than short term memory, it is really experienced at a time innappropriate to it, as though it were still tagged with an earlier timestap. In a similar way one discovers and learns how to see the fringes of sense data that is up to this point biologically useless to us like Haidinger's brush, hearing this sound requires that i pick up on the pattern that's always there and relearn where to find it in my experience. Then i can rise and fall with the waves of perceptual activity (approx 3 sec?) ---



4) Photons in the sky

Not to dismiss any of this too bruskly, but this one is probably your blood vessels. The vertebrate eye is constructed backwards: the blood vessels are in front of the retina (mollusks have it right), allowing us to see the blood being pumped across the visually receptive cells when looking at white (or blue) even lighted surfaces.
(anyone else got floaters? I should name mine.)


5) White noise and the sun

Again, not to dismiss too soon, but: my guess is that it's air pressure. We're under incredible air pressure in our atmosphere, and our bodies are built to push back (why you'll explode in space). The ear normally tunes out all the brownian motion and all the sound that's just sitting in a room (musicians talk about the sound of a room as independent of their music). But, if it really is only present in the daytime, that requires further investigation.

6) Very interesting. I get freeze frames sometimes. System seems to allow a moment of intense receptivity for a moment, and the impression lasts through the next few. It may be part of the system calming down after hyperactivity/overstimulation. Because hyper-receptivity is the reaction of the system appropriately to its perceived hierarchial importance of input, no? Seems so in my experience. Often happens in social situations, when i'm trying to regain control. I'll often focus really intensely on one face and listen the hell out of them, and it's relieving. Accompanied by the throbbing visual effect i first described. And often the snapshot freeze. A kind of attempt to control the wildly out-of-my-control social context, as my system usually needs control of input in order to process it at all: a feature (habit) of overstimulation? That i (we) need to be able to stop input at any point in order to process the waves of massive input we get?







7) Hypersensitivity and equilibrium

Although, Superkuh, there may not be any alteration of these form constants via ASDs, we are certainly more likely to stumble across them (in childhood usually) and investigate with exceptional systematic curiosity and even master the stimulation environments required to produce them. ... someone who knows should respond and say more here about systems theory, maybe in relation to stims? ...in relation to what i'm grasping at here in terms hypersensitivity what that looks like in system behavior; thus what outward/social behavior of the autie might correspond to said system's means of equilibrium. And then that same hard-earned and unique equilibrium state the key factor in our fascination/adeptness at mastering systems? The fact that we are such off keel systems trains our neural pathways to grasp at any means of stabilizing input/knowledge? Why we need stability so badly? Why that guy Roman writing in this section about his ex-girlfriend confesses his gross error in always attempting to produce the endgame phase of no change and his willingness to go to any length in removing the destabilizing factor (which obsession is itself a stabilizing mechanism)?

Whew, better stop before you stop reading.