perceptual distortions and aura

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Does anybody else have odd perceptual distortions and even some ability to induce them deliberately? It seems a lot like the aura for Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) but only very rarely do I seem to have any physical symptoms or confusion and have always maintained consciousness and not had amnesia after the fact. My brain seems very noisy before these episodes occur, and very quiet afterward. Also, I usually have a sense of well-being and even euphoria after the fact. Perhaps because I am so logic-oriented, I have moved away from the interpretation that these experiences have anything to do with physical reality or the supernatural. In mid adolescence I developed classical migraine headaches with aura and scotoma, which occurred about once every two weeks in a fairly regular cycle. Now I get scotoma and headache maybe once or twice a year. The earliest episode like this that I can remember occurred when I was about 2 1/2, my mom put a mirror on the floor to clean it, and I had the experience that the directions up and down were reversed, but I did not feel like I was going to fall or find it disturbing. In grade school, whenever it rained, I spent a lot of time just staring at puddles and watching clouds to induce this effect. Perhaps this is just normal, but it's not the only example. If I cover my eyes, I often see moving kaleidoscopic fractal-like patterns, as a kid I remember lying in bed at night and watching these fractal patterns. Sometimes, my perception of the shape of my body becomes elastic, for example I can imagine that I am a sphere and that I can expand that sphere. Usually, I don't find these experiences disturbing. One perception I have become used to that I used to find disturbing was the experience that I couldn't form a mental image of what I looked like or how other people might see me, now I know these episodes are temporary so I don't mind them so much. One perception that I still find a bit unsettling is I have a sort of mental map of my environment and where objects are located around me, very rarely I have had the experience that the world had basically rotated 180 degrees from my mental map. I don't know that it has happened at first, it's when I finally recognize that I am going in the opposite direction of the direction that I thought that I was going that I feel disoriented. Ambien is one thing that especially seems to trigger this perception, for example I see a road sign that says that I am heading South but my brain says that I am heading North, then I finally recognize that I really am heading South. Sometimes I also feel like I am heading uphill then suddenly realize that I am really heading downhill or vice versa, this use to happen very frequently, but it seems to happen less often when I am taking antidepressants.

I see auras around things sometimes, usually if I stare at them for awhile. If I stare at my hand long enough I can see something and there were these purple posters at school that I used to see a green aura around. And when I was little, I had trouble sleeping (I still do) and I used to stare at the ceiling and I could see patterns and willingly change them with my mind. I'm not sure if that was really what you were asking, but it reminded me of it.

Yes, that is a good example, I frequently see a green afterimage if I look at something bright pink or magenta, and a magenta afterimage if I look at something green, but I attributed that to image persistence and bleaching of color cells on the retina. I talked to my psychiatrist and he said migraine prodrome is a more likely explanation, that TLE is unlikely because I did not have the physical symptoms nor amnesia, plus Ambien is a benzodiazepine so if anything it should suppress TLE. He didn't think it was anything to worry about or that I am doing any damage to my brain when I induce these sensations.

One thing I did realize is normally I take Librax for IBS-like bowel spasms that I get related to Crohn's Disease, and I haven't been taking it this week since I have been getting up very early to take my daughter to camp, and Librax can make me drowsy. I also realized that the downhill / uphill illusion stopped around the time when I started taking Librax, so possibly there is some sort of correlation.

I have both TLE and migraines, and both of those can cause odd perceptual distortions. Some of what you guys are talking about are just ordinary afterimages though. ("Aura" doesn't generally refer to seeing auras around things either, it refers to either a simple-partial seizure when talking about seizures, or the part of a migraine that includes weird visual and other perceptual distortions if you're talking about migraines. It comes from the Greek word for "breeze" because some people's seizure auras feel like a breeze blowing on them.)

Some of the perceptual oddities I have seem to definitely be migraine-related, even when they're constant. Things like seeing dots or streaks of color or texture everywhere (without needing afterimages etc. to create them), which glitter or seem to move, and all sorts of strange feelings in my body, and looking at things and seeing what looks like looking at the world through wavy water, feeling too small or too big all of a sudden, and that kind of thing. (There's really too many to count.) There's also ones that happen more when I'm about to have the headache part of the migraine (headaches are only one part of migraine and you can have migraine without headaches, in fact migraine aura is migraine just as seizure aura is seizure), like seeing contour maps all over my field of vision that obscure everything and are rainbow-colored, seeing clouds of light that change color and also obscure my vision, etc.

I also have seizure auras that include strange smells, a feeling of dryness that feels like my whole body has turned into a desert, deja vu, jamais vu, time distortions, and other things like that. But that's not as frequent as migraine aura is for me (in fact with the seizures well-controlled, it rarely happens anymore, although it used to be quite frequent).

I have tinnitus pretty much constantly since I was about 16 years old, it sounds like the high-pitched sound that a CRT television makes, it's just sort of always there in the background. I also see tiny dots moving around almost all of the time, more noticeable against a bright background, or in a dark room everything looks sort of pointillist and grainy. Occasionally, I see a sort of shooting star, like a bright spot with a dark border around it that moves very quickly across my field of vision.

Nerves In Collision book by Walter C. Alvarez, M.D. (about complex partials, TLE, etc.).

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Regarding the idea of perception, I see 3D good but not perfectly. I also perceive motion good (in a way) although I tend to perceive motion imperfectly as a series of still pictures vs continuous motion (example: how bubbles appear boiling in a pot of water, how a yo-yo goes down and up the string). I also have mild constructional apraxia which a med for ADHD Inattentive (contains caffeine - 100 mg) for me tends to temporarily and partially slightly correct in small ways (not a cure).

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/apraxia/apraxia.htm

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Regarding medicines in general, there are medicines which can temporarily improve perception for some users in some ways; there are also medicines which do not do that and can, as a side-effect, cause an unwanted distortion of perception. That's my understanding.

Keeping a written medicine diary can slowly help sort out what a medicine does/doesn't do/possible side-effects and so on.

started seeing unusual things, like shimmering around tree leaves and tall grass. only that shade green. my for life terrible vision suddenly corrected itself to 20/20. blood test revealed hormone levels gone insane. mri showed tumor growing on pituitary glad, right where the optic nerves cross. you know, not so bad, considering.

1. yes, 2. no.

i really have some odd visual perceptions, don't know whether they are normal for AS or i have irlen syndrome but i am sure that things go visually a little haywire under certain stress situations, and so i think i visually overload easily, like when walking into a new place. mild acid like visuals (like someone has cranked up the brightness / contrast and things get a little haloed) and trouble making sense of things.

i'm sensitive to visual patterns and sometimes things seem to flicker or blink. the afterimages you mention (seeing one color after looking at another) i think are seen by everyone but i see them very easily and to the point of distraction.

i don't know what of the above (or of what you mention) can be attributed to hyperacute visual perception due to AS, what might be symptomatic of migraine aura, what might be irlen syndrome. i don't get migraines. it is difficult to know how others might see things and, therefore, what is perceptually unusual.




i have a very difficult time with directional transition - when i think i am headed one way then discover i am headed the other, and then have to "flip" movement map in my head. i get "stuck" where i thought i was going and have a hard time reorienting. but i don't see it as a visual perception thing.

I hadn't heard of Irlen before, nor the colored glasses and overlays, but it's interesting I just bought some sunglasses lately specifically because they came with 4 sets of different color lenses to play with different color lenses and see if I could find something to sort of dampen visual stimulation and reduce anxiety in certain situations. I think these sunglasses are really designed for firearms use and target practice in different lighting conditions, which I have no interest in, but no matter. The lenses are photochromic, meaning they darken in the presence of ultraviolet light, so I don't have to take them off moving between indoors and outdoors. The colors are gray, rose, rust and clear. So far I like the rust lenses the best. I may give some thought to what color lenses would block green or magenta, that could be interesting to try. Oh, of course, green and magenta are complements, so green lenses would filter out magenta, and magenta lenses would filter out green. I guess I would have to choose which one I feel is more annoying.

A situation that I find particularly stressful is being in a crowded place with people in a standing position, I become very irritable, banks, airports, crowded subway trains, cocktail parties, lines in stores, I suppose it's some form of social anxiety. If people are sitting down, like in a lecture or theater, it doesn't bother me, I don't know why this is. Anyway, I have had a few opportunities to test theses glasses this week in crowded environments, and have found that it makes a huge difference. I'm not sure what other people think when they see someone indoors wearing sunglasses, but oh well, I just imagine that I am a rock musician or something, which I sort of am, just not professionally. That also fits with some of my more interesting clothes purchases lately, which are along the lines of clothes that I find visually fascinating to look at and would be drawn to in a store, but formerly never would have worn, because they are not blue or gray.

For de-stimulation time at home, I played around with different color light bulbs, and found red light to be the most soothing, in terms of visual stimulation, it's like it doesn't even register. In case anyone is curious, the sunglasses are Serfas Optics Force 5 Sunglasses, I have no affiliation with Serfas other than as a purchaser of one of their products.