[HN Gopher] Blue field entoptic phenomenon
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Blue field entoptic phenomenon
Author : thunderbong
Score : 105 points
Date : 2024-05-24 05:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| free_energy_min wrote:
| Thanks for sharing i just discovered this a week ago!
|
| Crazy that we can see our own white blood cells and all we have
| to do is look up at the sky :)
|
| In my experience those white lights/graininess exists even when
| looking at other objects. Been trying to find a name for this.
|
| Is this true in others experience?
|
| I know there's a phenomenon called visual snow but it's not a
| negative experience like that seems to be for people. There's
| also eigengrau but I experience this even in good lighting.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| "Floaters"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater
|
| They're caused by little bits of gunk floating in the fluid
| inside your eyeball.
|
| > They may appear as spots, threads, or fragments of "cobwebs",
| which float slowly before the observer's eyes, and move
| especially in the direction the eyes move.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Floaters should usually be dark, not bright white.
| throwaway96666 wrote:
| I know what you're talking about. My neuro said it was still
| visual snow syndrome. I don't find it to be a negative
| experience, just something you see. Like (mild) tinnitus, it's
| only negative if you perceive it as negative.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think the pattern and intensity of visual snow is supposed to
| be different than this.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I can see stuff with my eyes closed while facing a bright light
| or in a dark room or with eyes open in a dark sky area. Some of
| it is floaters but there are other effects, not exactly
| matching the descriptions on wikipedia but it could be the same
| things.
| jameshart wrote:
| This whole list is just as fascinating:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entoptic_phenomenon
| Waterluvian wrote:
| "What's your white cell count?"
|
| _begins staring at the sky_
|
| I'm most fascinated by the concept of how our brain edits things
| out. The sensor to information pipeline is rather complicated. So
| much filtering and projecting and such being done.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Most wild thing I've heard lately is the cognition theory that
| most of what we perceive is surprise.
|
| The thumbnail sketch of the idea is: we know from glucose
| uptake studies that there's basically no way our brain is
| actively synthesizing every sensory stimulus at all times. The
| hypothesis is that the brain creates a sort of "predictive map"
| of reality (which is what we perceive), and then uses sensory
| stimulus to listen for variance from that predictive model. So
| most of the time, what you perceive is a hallucination of
| reality that maps close enough to what's going on, and only
| when sensory input starts to deviate from that predictive model
| does the brain dedicate the resources to "read" the sensory
| input and meld it into an update of the prediction to match
| reality.
|
| There was a Kyle Hill video on this recently. He also notes
| that there's an easy experiment you can do to observe your
| brain doing sensory fusion: touch your finger to your nose. We
| know, physically, that the signal from the finger takes way
| longer than the signal from the nose to reach the brain, but we
| perceive the two touches as a single instantaneous event that
| happens at the same time.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| I've had these - or rather, been able to see them - since I was
| a child out on playing on a large, empty field of fresh snow. I
| originally assumed they were little ice crystals freezing on my
| eyes (since it was very cold, and I was often outdoors in the
| snow when I saw them). Some time in my teenage years, I learned
| what they really were, which is even more fascinating. Once I
| notice them, I can pretty easily tune mine out, like one of
| those optical illusions where you can consciously switch
| between perspectives. (I have some floaters, and can normally
| do the same thing with them as well.)
| _ache_ wrote:
| Whoua ! I didn't know and assume we can see big particles coming
| from the sky.
| ffhhj wrote:
| I've never experienced important health issues, but since being a
| kid I noticed that staying still in squad pose and then standing
| up would cause very bright dots moving in my vision that would
| slowly go away. These should be caused by blood with low oxygen
| moving from my legs and into my brain. A few times my vision got
| very dark and I experienced a headache and eye pain, and felt
| like passing out.
|
| I've also became temporarily blind due to high voltage exploding
| wire at a few inches from my face. I remember the perfectly white
| line of the wire and the colors gradually but quickly becoming
| average gray from the middle to the sides of my vision, then the
| wire and the color disapeared with "no signal", there was no
| recognizable color, not even black.
| ThePinion wrote:
| I noticed this years ago while drunk on a bench staring at a
| sunny Alaska day, and have never been able to unsee it. It's
| completely ruined my lifelong enjoyment I would get from watching
| the clouds.
|
| It's one of those things that I've sorta explained to people that
| I can't look at the sky too long, but never want to give them the
| name of it or tell them what to look for because it may ruin
| their sky too.
| negative-vortex wrote:
| Thank you for the warning, not going to risk checking this
| rabbit hole
| yetihehe wrote:
| I always thought it's something connected to my high blood
| pressure, I typically see them on any bright background when
| air pressure changes or when I'm doing some exercises. I have
| normal eye pressure and no visible changes to retina, checked
| by opthalmologist. I just don't care about those dots when I
| see them, I accept them as sensor noise of my eyes, no reason
| to be angry at them.
| anon373839 wrote:
| This is actually a pretty common problem. In fact, I've
| experienced it myself. The crux of the problem is in the idea
| that you need to "unsee" it to enjoy the clouds again. That's
| not a productive goal.
|
| The problem is that if you're focused on trying to "unsee"
| something, you're actually going to see more of it. And anyway,
| "unseeing" isn't a thing that exists.
|
| Instead, you need to let yourself get comfortable with seeing
| it. That means looking at the clouds anyway, accepting that you
| may also notice the static. The idea is to get _some_ enjoyment
| from the clouds, however imperfect it may be. Try to pick some
| specific aspect of the clouds to appreciate or notice, and do
| this for a few minutes at a time.
|
| When attempting this, you might find yourself thinking things
| like "I wish I had never seen this" and "will it ever go away?"
| That's normal, but put your attention back on the clouds and
| whatever feature you've planned to appreciate. Over time, you
| may find that the blue field thing doesn't really annoy you
| like it used to. You might even forget to notice it sometimes.
| thunkle wrote:
| It's similar to tinnutis, and anxiety. You have to learn a
| degree of non judgemental response to unpleasant phenomena.
| It's key to resilience. I was helped a ton by the work of
| Steven C Hayes.
| User23 wrote:
| Weird! I noticed these just a week ago.
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| _As far as the eye can see_
|
| _An entoptic symphony_
|
| _When I close my eyes I see the light_
| dealbreaker wrote:
| About 10 years ago I went to an ophthalmologist. I had
| experienced a situation which I can only describe as a visual
| phenomenon traveling from one part of my visual field to beneath
| it. I was partially blind because of it. I can only think it was
| a very small stroke or something. They found nothing wrong with
| my eyes and in passing I mentioned these white things.
|
| Combined with my inability to explain what I saw, the doctor was
| visibly annoyed and said I need a psychiatrist not an
| ophthalmologist.
| zzeternia wrote:
| Over what time frame what the phenomenon? Have you heard of
| migraine aura? Descriptions vary, but they typically involve a
| visual disruption traveling across your field of view. They
| aren't always followed by headaches, and I have trouble seeing
| when I get one.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Scotomas are real. Get a new ophthalmologist.
| hooverd wrote:
| Doctors get surprisingly cranky when you have an issue that
| doesn't match their internal flowchart.
| giantg2 wrote:
| At first I thought this article might have been related to this.
| But it seems they are different.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena
| kleton wrote:
| I'd always assumed these were cosmic rays
| fuomag9 wrote:
| OMG finally I know the name of this thing! I knew it had to be
| different from floaters!
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| What about "the tunnel"? Does anyone experience that when looking
| at the sky? I'll notice it maybe 1-in-20 times I look at a blue
| sky. It isn't always there. It looks like moving through a tunnel
| -- it's a set of dark and light blobs moving outward from the
| center of my visual field
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Hmm. I see a dark tunnel when I close my eyes. It's blobby.
| Kind of like a swooshing in and out spiral. It's almost blue or
| purple against the black which gives the shape of the tunnel.
| Or maybe it's reversed, as i try now and it's definitely a most
| dark blue but blueish indeed. It expands, contracts, swirls,
| and goes.
| foehrenwald wrote:
| https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4613-8896-8_...
| "The inaccessibility of the retinal blood ves- sels precludes
| direct, noninvasive measure- ments of retinal blood flow.
| Indirect optical methods taking advantage of the visibility of
| the retinal vasculature must be used. A variety of methods have
| been applied.[...] Methods based on the perception of white blood
| cells (WBCs) moving in retinal macu- lar capillaries by means of
| the blue field entoptic phenomenon. Macular capillary blood flow
| is determined either by counting the number of WBCs passing in a
| given time through a single capillary 13 or by evaluating the
| average number and speed of WBCs in the field of observation
| using the blue field simulation technique. [...]"
| Zezima wrote:
| I have this as well, it's mildly entertaining but not
| overpowering. The floaters only appear when looking at a very
| bright blue clear sky, it never triggers otherwise.
|
| When it does I can pause, appreciate the show, and then go back
| to my day. It's a fun one for sure.
| jorvi wrote:
| Everyone has it, most people just don't notice it.
|
| You are much more susceptible to noticing it if you have Visual
| Snow Syndrome, which is basically as if your eyesight has a
| film grain overlaid on top of it.
|
| What is much more interesting about VSS is that you often also
| have hiss or ringing in your ears similar to tinnitus (but not
| as severe or annoying), crowd deafness, and you are also more
| susceptible to ADHD-like deficits and symptoms, which must mean
| the underlying cause for VSS is some kind of filtering problem
| in the brain.
|
| Transcranial magnetic stimulation can offer relief, if it is
| indeed a problem for the person.
|
| One of the benefits is an extremely vivid imagination. Example:
| when you tell an ordinary person "imagine a beautiful woman on
| the beach", they'll just imagine a woman of their particular
| taste, on a generic beach. Maybe they'll notice the color of
| the beach towel. But with less anchored imagination, you'll
| imagine the type of sand on the beach, the stance of the sun,
| the fabric of her bikini and if it is new or well-worn, jewelry
| including engraved brands, foliage, and all of that within a
| split second and without it taking effort or thinking. You can
| continue let the imagination run amok and you might imagine the
| whole city attached to the beach and the stories of other
| people that live there. Doesn't make for very productive
| workdays though :)
| hooverd wrote:
| So apparently that's different from visual snow!
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