Comments on: Q&A with Oliver Sacks: Hallucinations, neurological curiosities and a passion for understanding http://blog.ted.com/2009/09/17/qa_with_oliver/ The TED Blog shares interesting news about TED, TEDTalks video, the TED Prize and more. Sun, 19 May 2013 19:43:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Hallucinations are not Necessarily Madness | Mad In America http://blog.ted.com/2009/09/17/qa_with_oliver/comment-page-1/#comment-16475 Sat, 11 Aug 2012 14:34:28 +0000 http://blog-staging.ted.com/2009/09/qa_with_oliver/#comment-16475 [...] Item: Q&A with Oliver Sacks: Hallucinations, neurological curiosities and a passion for understanding Share [...]

]]> By: Hugh Chatfield http://blog.ted.com/2009/09/17/qa_with_oliver/comment-page-1/#comment-2365 Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://blog-staging.ted.com/2009/09/qa_with_oliver/#comment-2365 Musical hallucinations…. I recall being in a hospital for some minor surgery and after surgery wandered down to the patients lounge. Another fellow came in and we discussed what we were in for. He said the only thing that bothered him was the music when he closed his eyes. I was astounded because I had the same thing – everytime I close my eyes – some big band music would crank up the volume. He claimed it was the effect of the morphine.

I also remember after some dental surgery, and taking pain killers with codeine seeing visual hallucination. A full sized fire breathing dragon emerged from my closet – and set of drawers suddenly had flames licking out of every drawer. Very kewl – and I realized that it was a hallucination – the colours were very vivid – and the visions being quick flashes.

So chemicals can cause these hallucinations – which was probably why people used to take LSD.

]]> By: Hugh Chatfield http://blog.ted.com/2009/09/17/qa_with_oliver/comment-page-1/#comment-2366 Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://blog-staging.ted.com/2009/09/qa_with_oliver/#comment-2366 I have noted that recently I have infrequently seen images when my eyes were closed. Very vivid, clear, 3D images. One striking one was of some sort of alien like plant – something I had never seen before. Didn’t last long. When I tried summoning the image up from my memory though – what I could see was a very pale imitation. From Dr Sack’s talk I could see that the original image originate in a different part of the brain – probably from some sort of forward firing in the visual processing chain – whereas the memory version is coming from an entirely different location with much of the detail lost. Yet curiously I can remember that the memory images are not the same as the original images and can describe the differences… but cannot reconstruct the visual image itself. Curious machine this brain.

]]> By: Kyle Robles http://blog.ted.com/2009/09/17/qa_with_oliver/comment-page-1/#comment-2367 Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://blog-staging.ted.com/2009/09/qa_with_oliver/#comment-2367 Wow, I wish i can watch him live, discussing other of it’s book.

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