• Question: Is apophenia a thing that blind people have, where they halucinate and see images that aren't actually true?

    Asked by sciencetube145 to Gioia, Iain, Jo, Leo, Mariam on 22 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Leo Garcia

      Leo Garcia answered on 19 Jun 2010:

      Apophenia means seeing patterns in random or meaningless data:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

      And the phenomenon of blind people have visual sensations is called ‘phantom sight’ or ‘phantom visions’:

      http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10714080

    • Photo: Iain Moal

      Iain Moal answered on 19 Jun 2010:

      No, I suspect that you are thinking of Charles-Bonnet syndrome. This syndrome is talked about a lot in the book ‘Phantoms in the Brain: Human Nature and the Architecture of the Mind’ by V.S. Ramachandran. It is one of my favorite books of all time. It is really easy to read, and its not technical nor does it require prior knowledge. I would really recommend it.

    • Photo: Mariam Orme

      Mariam Orme answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      It sounds like you know a lot more about it than me sciencetube145 – I’d never even heard of it until now!

    • Photo: Joanna Watson

      Joanna Watson answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      I’ve never heard of apophenia – you really are super smart aren’t you! I think you might be a better scientist than me already.
      🙂

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