Joe E. Dees:
>You're a smart guy, and even sceptical of the sceptics; I like that.
Thank you.
>Please help me ground an experience I had last year. I was receiving
>a CAT scan to discern whether or not the cluster headaches I was
>experiencing were due to a brain tumor. As the machine objectively
>took progressive pictures of my brain layers (from the top down - hehe),
>I subjectively experienced, first a purple ring around the periphery
>of my closed eye visual field, then a large purple donut, then a smaller
>one, then total darkness again.
Did you ask the doctor performing the tests if that was a common experience?
How long did you have to lie still during the proceedure? An alternative
hypothesis
could be that you were experiencing the first stages of a sensory deprivation
induced hallucination...if you sit still for long enough you'll visualize lots
of things.
On the other hand, it conceivable that nobody has ever made a broad survey of the subjective experience of patients during a CAT scan.
>This seems to be confirmative of the thesis that visual experience is
>isomorphically mapped onto the parietal cortex, but further than that,
>it would seem to be a gateway to a Rosetta Stone of psychophisiological
>relation.
It is pretty exciting, if true. Imagine the applications: genuine "virtual reality" for a start. Seems easy enough to test, too.
Reed
Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------