63 · Vision Scientist · Seeing without Eyes
Description
‘I have narcolepsy. Sometimes in sleep paralaysis, I hallucinate that my visual world is split. The left side is reality, and the right side is a bad dream, and I am sliding towards it.
‘I met this blind woman who at some point started hallucinating technicolor light, then started seeing her hand as she waved it across her face, then other objects. I ran experiments, and her brain images looked similar to those of a sighted person looking at the same objects.’
Dr Jesse Breedlove studies mental imagery and hallucinations. We first talk about her own narcolepsy and sleep paralysis experiences. Then she describes her experiments on a blind lady with non-optic sight, the blindsight on ibogaine phenomenon from the previous episode, and her theory for what’s going on here. Then we talk about stretching the definition of ‘vision’, the pushback in the scientific community against such phenomena, and about neurodivergence.
United States
