Observations placeholder
Ramachandran, Dr V S - On Charles Bonnet Syndrome
Identifier
001331
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Charles Bonnet syndrome (CBS) is a condition that causes patients with visual loss to have complex visual hallucinations, first described by Charles Bonnet in 1760
The people - often suffering from significant visual loss - have vivid, complex recurrent visual hallucinations or visions. The people who get the hallucinations are usully well aware the images are not ‘real’ in the sense of being physically existent . The hallucinations are only visual, that is, they do not occur in any other senses, e.g.: hearing, smell or taste. Among older adults (>65 years) with significant vision loss, the prevalence of Charles Bonnet syndrome has been reported to be between 10% and 40%; a recent Australian study has found the prevalence to be 17.5%. Wikipedia noted that “ The high incidence of non-reporting of this disorder is the greatest hindrance to determining the exact prevalence; non-reporting is thought to be as a result of sufferers being afraid to discuss the symptoms out of fear that they will be labelled insane”
Here is an example…………..
A description of the experience
Phantoms in the Brain – Dr V. S. Ramachandran [Professor and Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognition, University of California and visiting fellow All Souls College, Oxford]
I met Larry 5 years after his accident because he had heard about my interest in visual hallucinations. He talked slowly, with effort, but was otherwise intelligent and perceptive. His life was normal except for one astonishing problem. His visual hallucinations, which used to occur anywhere and everywhere in his visual field with brilliant colours and spinning motions, had retreated into the lower half of his field of vision, where he was completely blind. That is, he would only see imaginary objects below a centre line extending from his nose outwards, everything above the line was completely normal; he would always see what was really out there.
'Back in the hospital, colours used to be a lot more vivid' Larry said.
'What did you see' I asked.
'I saw animals and cars and boats, you know. I saw dogs and elephants and all kinds of things'
'You can still see them?'
'Oh yeah, I see them right now here in the room'
...'right now you're looking straight at me. It's not like you see something covering me right now, right?'
'As I look at you, there is a monkey sitting in your lap'
I thought he was joking. 'Tell me how you know you're hallucinating'
'I don't know. But it's unlikely there would be a professor here with a monkey sitting in his lap so I think there probably isn't one'. He smiled cheerfully
[But the same patient also saw images which he had never seen before, this somewhat helps to prove the existence of the composer having access to the spiritual world at large]
Phantoms in the Brain – Dr V. S. Ramachandran [Professor and Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognition, University of California and visiting fellow All Souls College, Oxford]
'Are the images you see, like the monkey in the lap, things you've seen before in your life or can the hallucinations be completely new?'
Larry thought for a moment and said 'I think they can be completely new images, but how can that be? I always thought that hallucinations were limited to things you've already seen elsewhere in your life