When Your Eyes Can’t See, but Your Brain is Still Watching 

The brain is the only thing in known existence that named itself.

[Insert *"Obama putting 🏅 around Obama's neck"* meme here]

@@BrainInjuredTortellinniwhat about the cuckoo

@@BrainInjuredTortellinnialso i think whales dolphins and even bats have ways to address other individuals it’s just that we don’t understand their language yet

​@@elmersito3kWhat? We still named those.

Good to know. Perfect name. We've adopted a one eyed white cat who showed up in our woods. Maybe a granddaughter(?) of our older white male cat (also a showed up adoption). She's more trusting with my husband, but is still very leary from being feral. She shows no lack having just one good eye. Vet doesn't know if she was born with the bad eye or acquired it, but says it's not fixable.

🤨🤨

how u typin brodie 😭

@@jjkembo8810speech to text exists, as well as getting someone else to type for you

🤣🤣 can't figure out whether you're being serious or being sarcastic

​@@hescrem9316how did he read the title then ?

"Weaponized autism"

"silently standing in the hallway" what are you sneaking past?

My mom was a big eavesdropper, so she'd silently patter down the hallway and stand outside my door to listen in on my phone calls and stuff. I've always had outstanding hearing, so the disruption of the airflow in the hallway was noticeable to me. (It came in handy) :) @@shinobiighost6946

I can relate too well with learning how to map my surroundings and those in it. I hope you were just mischievous, and REALLY HOPE you are now safe and happy!!!!!!!!!!!

After being partially blind for many years I lost the rest of my sight, but I do still feel like I see the world around me. It's not a clear or accurate picture necessarily, but I see it like the input is coming thrgh my eyeballs. And I do think of it as being similar to long-term phantom limb, or my body is just putting the input from other senses into visual stimulous. Interesting stuff.

@@addaptinginthedark I am curious, when you dream, do you have vision still? Or do your dreams look different after losing your sight?

Like when we are in a dark room trying to sleep and those funny shapes with all sort of colors appear?

I have discovered that my dreams intensify when I don't have a creative outlet and become more subdued when I do. Based on this idea of visual hallucinations of people going blind, I have to wonder if the brain doesn't have some mechanism to generally avoid atrophy. Like maybe it has some feature that purposefully stimulates itself if its not getting enough use?

Maybe the brain 🧠 was always hallucinating arm movements and you 🫵 only noticed when the arm was removed.

Ive had something similar with migraines causing me to not be able to see but still being able to recognize objects and even read despite an aura blocking basically all my vision

How do you train for that?

@@derekfrost8991 not the person you're asking; but as someone who's been experimenting a bit (emphasis on the "a bit"), i've personally found wandering around my flat blindfolded is quite good; both passively listening and clicking. I'm not good, but I can usually detect open doorways, some corners, and situate/orrient myself along one particularly acoustically distinct corridor. Again, this isn't particularly systematic; and I still have a lot to learn, but that's what i've been experimenting with thus far. Things that I keep an ear out for; any particular resonating (long/narrow geometries seem to have this, and I find useful to orient myself in corridors), amplification (usually corners), delayed echos (the more echo-y a sound is, the further away the thing is), sound quality changing as you move past something (usually happens as I pass an open door or other abruptly changing geometry; the sound stops bouncing against the wall, and into the room behind the door). Something I find unintuitive (or am doing wrong), is that since a click will echo more the further away the wall is, a nearby wall won't echo; identifying a lack of echo as something being nearby is weird, and not something i've fully figured out yet. Additionally, just trying to figure out the quality of large vs cramped rooms also helps (they sound qualitatively different in a useful way). Something that apparently also works is having someone else hold a plate/bowl around your head, and trying to figure out where it is as it amplifies the click back, but i've not experimented with this. Again; i'm still very much experimenting; so can't offer much substantial; but hope that can offer some insight...

I have a visual impairment. I'm not completely blind but I have unintentionally experienced echolocation on numerous occasions. Its not a skill i have learned enough to be able to use effectively but its a very strange experience. This is actually quite an effective technique to get used to the feel in my experience. Blindfold yourself in an area you are somewhat familliar with to the extent you know it is safe and just try walking along and listening. stop as soon as you feel what I can only describe to me as a slower urge to flinch or stop. Keep repeating until you start to have an element of trust in this. As I said, I haven't actively learned this and don't really know how best to explore this further but I feel its an effective starting point

Tree canopys have a wonderful sound, don't they?

@@derekfrost8991 So far mostly by just trying things, clicking in different environments and trying to figure out what things sound like. On walks or skiing across fields I try to hear echoes from forests or barns, and I used to go to my old school area on late winter evenings to try echolocation around the buildings. Just try to listen to everything. You know by looking what's around you, so eventually by trying enough you'll learn to connect the dots and start visualizing what you hear around you. That's my theory anyways, I'm still at the stage of figuring out what things sound like and far from visualization..

Its as if sight and our awareness of sight are two distinctly different things.

That could also be the headphones blocking sub-sonic sounds, a la the "Ghost Effect"

In case you don't know why the blind spots exist, it's because the nerves (and blood vessels) of the retina sit in front of the light sensitive cells. All of those nerves and blood vessels have to get to the back of the retina somehow and somewhere. They all pass through the retina at the same place and so there's no room for light sensing cells there. We can't usually notice the blind spots for several reasons: while both eyes have a blind spot the two blind spots aren't in the same place on the visual field so they cover for each other, the blind spots are off in our peripheral vision where we can't see detail anyway, our eyes are constantly moving around to look at things and so we're aware of what's at the blind spot even if we can't see it "right now", and lastly our brain does what our brain always does and edits out the hole in our vision by assuming that the surrounding visual features are also present in that spot (even if we just moved a finger into the blind spot and now there's no finger to be seen 8).

To add to gildedbear’s comment, our retina works that way because they grew in backwards millions of years ago in our furthest common ancestors and has fucked us over ever since. Meanwhile, cephalopods like squids and octopuses have retinas growing in the right direction, and have their optic nerves _behind_ the retina, not on top of it, and therefore have no blind spot.

@@Appletank8 Just goes to show that evolution only cares if something works, not how well it works.

I believe I heard that is the spot on the retina where the nerves enter / exit the eye so there are no cones or rods there.

Ive experienced this before. Fascinating, perhaps from a time before artificial light when a mental model was absolutely necessary to escape predation.

You probably also have a good proprioception sense

@@BodyMusicification Good point. I wonder how accurate this is for most people. I've always taken it for granted that I can do pretty decent dead reckoning navigation with my eyes closed. On this subject, I actually find that when I need to make quick and accurate movements, sometimes looking away or even closing my eyes allows for BETTER accuracy. Like this one time I was attempting to unload my wife's vehicle that had a bunch of stuff and parked close against the wall of the garage. After the 3rd or 4th time that I hit the body of the car trying to get these things out quickly, I started closing my eyes before getting out and suddenly I stopped hitting stuff. My theory is that integrating my vision is slower and less accurate than using my minds eye and proprioception.

Try doing that in a place you don't know, I thought I could see well in the dark because I can do the same but it turned out it only applied to places I knew.

​I know my house perfectly and can navigate it blindfolded without issue this is untrained imagine what training can do

Try drawing a little coloured dot on the side of your nose. You'll notice it then.

Wait until you grow a hair on the tip of your nose. You'll find out your brain doesn't filter it out completely!!!

Ohhh.... Does that work on tests? LOL.

Stay curious, please, because too many people are not.

Sci=Show channel and of course Kurzgesagt are both loaded with bangers too (although Kurzgesagt does feel like it's there to educate 11=yearolds sometimes)

Wow thats incredible. Can i ask what age you first noticed that?

I wonder if this could be a form of synesthesia...? Really neat stuff, thanks for sharing

Aphantasia is something my anxious and imaginative mind just can't comprehend!

If you have no internal audio or visuals how do you think? What’s the alternative?

I would like to recommend lots of meditation for you. Just meditate on nothing at all, keeping your focus between the brows. Do this as much as possible, you will begin to learn and see past the colors. If you remain focused between the brows you will get a swirling deep indigo color, swirling in or swirling out. Please do start the practice of meditation often, you wont regret it. Wishing you the best!

ah yes, the survivor's bias

I think it's down to the parts of the brain that don't arise in consciousness. Still doing things like storing memories, collecting sensory information, and avoiding danger, all while never being noticed by our conscious mind.

It's funny that you thought of strobelight in nightclubs where as my defauit analogous memory was that scene in Saw 1 where the photographer is trying to navigate around his house with just the flash on his camerabefore the inevitable jump scare happens. This is also super ironic to me because I spent half my adult life working in and/ or enjoying night clubs. A good lighting system can make you feel like you're literally in a glitch The Matrix.

I think a variable click rate would be a great thing because you have to figure sometimes you need more information and sometimes you just want to have a seated conversation.

This is an extremely common question you should google it, really interesting and differs between people.

I think you're just talking about imagination. I can close my eyes and picture my apartment end even walk around in it. But will my actual apartment line up with my mental model? That just takes practice. My cousin who went blind did exactly that by memorizing how many steps to each room and object. I don't believe in metaphysical stuff but I did once find a lost set of keys with my eyes closed. That was a bit trippy.

How did you type this comment?

@@rickyrickstan563 with Siri and blindness doesn’t mean total that’s a really ignorant comment

Another vision sense i read about years ago: under your eyes above your cheekbones there is light sensors in or under the skin that sense the amount of long term light, these give you a sense of the seasons. Of course with modern man, the non natural light can throw it off, or you were raised near equator you learn to ignore it.

The latter two are derivative of your sense of touch while the first is derivative from your sense of hearing + vision.