“We see with our eyes, but we also see with our minds.”
-Oliver Sacks (Neurologist)
Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks brings our attention to Charles Bonnett syndrome – when visually impaired people experience lucid hallucinations. He describes the experiences of his patients in heartwarming detail and walks us through the biology of this under-reported phenomenon.
He particularly focuses on the hallucinations of Charles Bonnet syndrome where damage or decay of the retina can cause strikingly complex hallucinations of people and animals that seems to be a natural part of the visual scene. What diseases such as these are starting to reveal about the structure and amazing complexity of the brain, not least of which is the multiplicity of independent information processing centers dedicated to visual perception alone.