What do you call these visual processes/disturbances?
1) When you just wake up, possibly stare at the wall or the room, and things in your visual field don’t come together. Sort of waking up into a warped space, like M.C. Escher’s drawings. A few seconds later, your 3D, put-everything-together sense kicks in and you realize that you’re looking at the wall, and the strange, floating rectangular pit is not a pit but the door’s opening.
2) This could happen when you sneeze? You see transparent confetti falling. It’s sparkly transparent and with rainbow colors, wiggling down like worms. A few seconds later everything returns to normal.
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6 Answers
The first one is exteroception, particularly equiIibrioception, I think.
The second one… well, I know what you’re talking about, but I have no idea what it’s called.
GQ @longtresses and GA @the100thmonkey.
I recognise them both.
Intrigued by the first, bothered (usually) by the second.
The second, as far as I am concerned, is caused by tiredness.
Most of the time it lasts for minutes, some times it bugs me for over an hour, and everything I look at or read gets that extra layer of spics and dots and smears and stars.
@the100thmonkey Thank you. I followed your link then to the equilibrioception page on wiki. Equilibrioception is the sense of balance as produced by the ears, the eyes, and the body; “in humans, equilibrioception is mainly sensed by the detection of acceleration, which occurs in the vestibular (ear) system.”
When this warped vision thing happened (twice in my life) I don’t recall moving my head. I was just waking up, head on the pillow. One time it took me a while staring at the clothing rack before realizing what it was. How odd that this has to do with balance.
@rebbel Wow.. for an hour? If you frequently have this, around what age was the onset?
These weren’t hangover symptoms btw… I have a clean bill of health..
@longtresses Mid thirties, i believe.
Fortunately these long ones only occurred twice so far, and I was exhausted at the time, both physically and mentally.
@longtresses SO glad to know I’m not alone! :-) GQ
Sometimes, the 1st one happens to me when I’m too close to something, and I think of it as depth perception whatever – but is it’s this equilibrioception thing then I’m glad to know there a name for this!
The second, I think might have something to do with the “blood rushing to your head”.. sometimes when i stand up too fast, I see these little swirly contorting pieces of confetti and when I move my eyes to them, they disappear. Does this still happen to you or do I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about?
@greenergrass When the 1st one happened to me, the walls were very far. I wasn’t staring at something a few centimeters from my eyes or blurring my vision the way I adjust camera lens.
Yes I know what blood rushing to my head feels like. That one is more like microscopic TV color pixels shifting than falling confetti/worms. Anyway..
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