1. Comment #416943 by krhes on September 18, 2009 at 10:52 pm

Watched this yesterday by sheer coincidence, and what a wonderfully thoughtful, dispassionate and yet humanly empathetic explanation of the 'ghosts' that fire up simply because they must. Large teeth and geometric shapes - how strange we all are! Charles Bonnet Syndrome is new to me…

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2. Comment #416946 by Smashman42 on September 18, 2009 at 11:11 pm

Fascinating stuff!

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3. Comment #416947 by alovrin on September 18, 2009 at 11:14 pm

Great talk.
fMRI seems to be a great tool for neuroscience.
The theatre of the mind produced by the machinery of the brain.
DAR, RM get over here, let me strap you in.

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4. Comment #416950 by DamnDirtyApe on September 18, 2009 at 11:21 pm

Sacks is great. :)

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5. Comment #416956 by TIKI AL on September 18, 2009 at 11:46 pm

So it was Charles Bonnet Syndrome experiments we were doing with blindfolds and "blue cheer" in the 60's?

I too suffer with the good doctor from constant tinnitus. Others in the "club" include Eric Clapton, Paul Simon, Niel Young, and of course, Beethoven.

The ringing is even more amplified by the Salvation Army bell ringers around Christmas. Yet another nail in religion's coffin.

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6. Comment #416959 by Lucas on September 18, 2009 at 11:55 pm

Well, for me and many I've talked to about this, purposefully and repeatedly inducing a hallucinatory state has had the singularly common effect of proving to each of us that our brains are capable of conjuring almost any image or impression we can imagine and making that image seem as real as reality. The human mind is extremely flexible and can convince itself of just about anything. Based on many years of extremely intense lucid dreams and a lifelong battle with sleep paralysis, I tend to think that dream images and hallucinations work on a very similar principle and likely operate in the same regions of the brain. If you've ever woken up, paralyzed, with a demon sitting on your chest laughing and drooling on you, then you know what it is to believe in such things. Thankfully, once the paralysis wears off and you are fully awake, and if you're a nonbeliever, the impression of that evil demon can be easily explained away. I'd love to see comparative fMRI analysis of those in a dream state, a hallucinatory state, and in the grip of a religious vision. Something tells me those brain scans will look pretty similar.

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7. Comment #416961 by Nercury on September 19, 2009 at 12:04 am

Everything seems to point to "reality simulator" sustained by sensory inputs, which serves as real world view while one is awake and training ground while dreaming.

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8. Comment #416967 by Lucas on September 19, 2009 at 12:17 am

Nercury - Totally.

TIKI AL - Were you ever a fan of the band Blue Cheer? Good stuff.

And boy would I have loved to be able to tell Jack Kirby about the special portion of the brain for cartoons. Every animator and comics artist in the world should know this!

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9. Comment #416976 by TIKI AL on September 19, 2009 at 2:29 am

Lucas @ 8: Oh yea, we were "real hip" and listened to everyone back then including Joplin, Hendrix, Cream, Lawrence Welk, and Blue Cheer while we were on "blue cheer".

WIKI: "Blue Cheer was the epitome of San Francisco psychedelia. The band was rumored to have been named after a brand of LSD and promoted by renowned LSD chemist and former Grateful Dead patron, Owsley Stanley."

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10. Comment #416998 by TheLordHumungus on September 19, 2009 at 4:44 am

Coming across this today was very cool since I had my very first lucid dream last night. It is the first dream I have ever had where I remember nearly all of it in great detail, and can look back on it as if it where a memory.

One cool aspect of this dream was that I was aware of the possibility that it was a dream but not sure, and had this exact thought to myself that, "If this is a dream, it is one god-damn realistic one!"

Our brains are so amazing in their simulation abilities. It is no wonder that some people have believed that they have spoken to god or seen angels. I really feel sorry for the faith-heads that they can't realize this. It really makes life so much more interesting.

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11. Comment #416999 by TheLordHumungus on September 19, 2009 at 4:50 am

Comment #416959 by Lucas on September 18, 2009 at 11:55 pm

I have had sleep paralysis as well fairly regularly and seen things like my sister's dog and an evil demon elephant, but if you have had intense lucid dreams throughout your whole life I have to envy you. Having this one last night for the first time, I really can't get over what an amazing experience it was.

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12. Comment #417035 by SilentMike on September 19, 2009 at 9:39 am

I agree with the TED guy at the end. That was fascinating.

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13. Comment #417066 by Logicel on September 19, 2009 at 1:08 pm

One of my fave psych blogs, MindHacks, has a thoughtful review of this TED vid:

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/09/oliver_sacks_on_the_.html

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14. Comment #417101 by Lucas on September 19, 2009 at 3:38 pm

TheLordHumungus - Not much to envy, really. Mostly flying and then falling. Hard. Once when I was ten I was able to body jump between all the members of the original Avengers as they attacked a HYDRA/AIM weapons base. The most intense period was when I was in the Peace Corps: my bloodstream was suddenly lacking in it's regular dose of tetrahydrocannabinol and suddenly inundated with mefloquine. The lack of the former tends to induce insomnia and increase my dream activity, including sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming, while the latter is known to have intense psychological effects, including hallucination leading to insanity and suicide. Of course, the former is illegal, while the latter was pumped into me against my will by the US government. But I will say this: it's a hell of a thing to be in a fantasy world in your own brain that you can almost completely control. For brief moments, I've been godlike.

TIKI AL - Shit man, I'm jealous. Have you ever heard of a band called Shiver? They apparently used to play in SF circa '67-'70. The lead guy had a hook. They often played Hells Angels parties, and opened for the Dead a few times. I think they're the best unknown band from that period. There's only one recording. It's hard to find, but I have it. Shiver, along with Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly, and the song Machine Gun by Hendrix are the earliest roots of heavy metal as far as I'm concerned (and I'm a rock/metal historian of sorts).

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15. Comment #417136 by SaintStephen on September 19, 2009 at 6:21 pm

14. Comment #417101 by Lucas on September 19, 2009 at 3:38 pm

At the New Year's Eve show at Oakland Auditorium in 1982, I saw Jerry Garcia's head morph into a giant green T-Rex head, complete with huge eyes and teeth, on the big screen behind the stage. Didn't affect his guitar-playing one bit.

This was the only thing even close to a 'hallucination' that I've had. Many other more subtle effects, to be sure. I wasn't scared a bit... it was like watching a movie.

(The really freaky part was driving my Ford Pinto back over the S.F. Bay Bridge after the concert at 3:30 AM. Now that was an experience.)

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16. Comment #417180 by Mark Smith on September 19, 2009 at 10:22 pm

Wonderful and fascinating talk

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17. Comment #417253 by weavehole on September 20, 2009 at 4:57 am

Shiver, along with Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly, and the song Machine Gun by Hendrix are the earliest roots of heavy metal as far as I'm concerned (and I'm a rock/metal historian of sorts).

McCartney denier!!

;)

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18. Comment #417662 by PERSON on September 21, 2009 at 2:54 pm

Does he talk about closed-eye visuals?
Someone I know hallucinated they were a computer generating a mandelbrot (they could see all the complex orbitals as each point was tested for membership). There was a big pool of drool on the sofa where they'd been lying when they came out of it.

UPDATE: I've watched it now.
As he alludes to, "cartoons" go back a long way


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19. Comment #418109 by 31073 on September 22, 2009 at 7:59 pm

I have a specific form of macular degeneration and I guess i get geometric hallucinations. Generally on a noisy FOV I dont notice my blind spot, but with my eyes closed, or looking at a solid color I see something like fractal patterns.

I also get visual hallucinations during migraines but i haven had one in years.

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