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Vision, Hearing, Smell, other Senses Heightened?

Fri, 05/28/2010 - 17:46

A coassociate and I were talking today and I told him sometimes I wish my Superman-like vision and hearing could be toned down just a bit and my memory improved.  By "Superman-like", I mean that I can hear things others find inaudible because they arent very loud, and I can see things clearly very far away.

He said he wondered if that had anything to do with my E--maybe other people with E also experience profound vision, hearing, or any other senses?  I'm talking about all the time, not just select moments.

Anyone else also have exceptional senses?

 

Jason

 

 

Comments

Re: Vision, Hearing, Smell, other Senses Heightened?

Submitted by 3Hours2Live on Sat, 2010-05-29 - 02:06
Hi Jassmit, Altered levels of consciousness (whatever that means) can change the experienced levels of sensations, which I tend to interpret more as a reduction of the ability to ignore otherwise inconsequential minutiae that's distractionary. As a teenager, I was told just to ignore the irritating "squell" of ultrasonic burglar alarms that had the emitters left on 24-hours a day; at first I was told that it was impossible to hear them, but many teenagers can hear them, and nowadays, they are often illegally used to disperse or discourage groups of teenagers hanging around store fronts. Most people that had that ability, loose their hearing in that frequency range after adolescence. Epilepsy has a complex relationship with the biology of adolescence, and whether this biological change in hearing is related to having or developing epilepsy is probably answered in some medical journals somewhere º. I also had the ability to visualize the locations of objects in the dark by whistling in childhood, which I thought no one would believe me, and my skill has now greatly dropped, but I've read parts of the book "See What I'm Saying" by Lawrence D, Rosenblum (March 2010), that somewhat validates my experiences. "New studies have shed light on the surpising power and reach of our senses." Amazon-dot-com has samples of the book, and books-dot-google has limited preview at: http://books.google.com/books?id=_cp-HJx9rVQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=see+what+i'm+saying&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false While many seizures of epilepsy gives short-term "heightened" senses, Keppra seems to give me a lasting increase in the sensitivity to slightest of odors, making some odors extremely annoying if they last too long. I also have painless migraines that are aggravated by certain odors around the time of any migraine, so the increased sensitivity is then made more of a major problem. Keppra also seems to make my lungs easily irritated by the slightest irritant. Some TLE seizures gives me short-term synesthesia between the sense of smell being perceived as the sense of touch, which is amusing for a couple short periods, but when it's repeated too often, or lasts too long, it becomes very annoying. Tadzio

Re: Vision, Hearing, Smell, other Senses Heightened?

Submitted by wichitarick1 on Sun, 2010-05-30 - 16:53

peace R.C.

Hi NOT High !  BUT HEIGHTENED FOR SURE!  YES!

This has become an interesting topic for me as of late and one I wished I would have been aware of years ago.

Please follow this topic around on the science blogs on the web. 

I had a massive T.C. sz. in my first cycle of r.e.m. about 8 hrs. ago and from what I feel and understand from some fairly recent e.e.g.'s my brain has switched sides "again" .

These things "feelings" are one of the hardest things to explain to a "civilian" or normal person that I have ever been through yet, and usually leave me with more questions than answers for BOTH of us.

I have never noticed any sharp visual effect ? but my hearing is off the charts .

I love a lot of the associations to other things that are made in this thread.

The electric in the walls lol yes oh yes lol  The i-pods lol yes.   The teen age link is interesting also.

The M.S. link interests me because I had a dear friend with M.S. (R.I.P.) and we bonded in an odd way after our first meeting (literally lol we met in an A.A. meeting lol) .

I had 3 massive ,back to back szs. a few yrs ago and all my feelings have changed .

My enemy has become almost all electric motors and I "feel" I could show a true link to the speed the motor is (r.p.m.) and what it does to me .

Not in a synesthesia kind of way , I "feel" the humming is causing me to lose concentration and possibly be having that aura or partial sz that is so hard to document ??? I will try to say this in print for the first time 

The older tape deck will not bother me BUT the newer c.d. player will and I have not even plugged in a newer d.v.d player because the brrrrrrrr. bzzzzzzzzzzzz. it makes can cause feelings in my left side similar to what a stroke victim would say to an E.R. worker. 

My table saw doesn't bother me but my newer high speed band saw causes a background HMMMMMMMM. that only me and my small terrier seem to notice ? many of these motors (tools) have caused something I describe as a fear factor in me (panic attack) so bad I have NOT used them in several years and am considering selling most of my wood shop? 

I can also say that I can "feel" a lot of new cars and for the next few days I will be able to detect numerous humming sounds from newer cars BUT with the motor,exhaust ,and transmission as the background and the electronics as the primary noise I hear AND FEEL. 

I also understand that none of this has any thing to do with my primary hearing and have been shown it is all "literally" in my head lol. I also have severe vertigo and a constant humming in my ears that is separate from the tinnitus that I experience from these newest meds.

I have always been highly sensitive to vacuums lol and my former wife was the only one to understand this AND claims to have seen me get a headache lol when the vacuum started .

The synesthesia effect I have is different than the extreme increase in my hearing . I do understand the connection between my smell and my other feelings though. YES I CAN HEAR THIS PAINTING LOL and on a day like today will be able to smell it ,taste it, and see it in a few 100 different colors also. lol

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2010/05/different_types_of_synaesthetic_experiences_involve_different_brain_mechanisms.php

This link connects to a few 100 pgs. of some of the better chatter on this subject.

I have started trying to find the connection between my szs. and my sisters migraines but have not spent any time talking with her about her feelings or heightened perception of anything.

I have often over the past 10 or 15 yrs used psychedelic drugs and their effects as ways to describe how I feel when I am in different postictal stages. lol and now even have several professionals using this as a reference .

Because the "in tune" effects I have experienced from l.s.d. and mescaline are erierly similar to what I have felt with E.    Rick 

 

peace R.C.

Hi NOT High !  BUT HEIGHTENED FOR SURE!  YES!

This has become an interesting topic for me as of late and one I wished I would have been aware of years ago.

Please follow this topic around on the science blogs on the web. 

I had a massive T.C. sz. in my first cycle of r.e.m. about 8 hrs. ago and from what I feel and understand from some fairly recent e.e.g.'s my brain has switched sides "again" .

These things "feelings" are one of the hardest things to explain to a "civilian" or normal person that I have ever been through yet, and usually leave me with more questions than answers for BOTH of us.

I have never noticed any sharp visual effect ? but my hearing is off the charts .

I love a lot of the associations to other things that are made in this thread.

The electric in the walls lol yes oh yes lol  The i-pods lol yes.   The teen age link is interesting also.

The M.S. link interests me because I had a dear friend with M.S. (R.I.P.) and we bonded in an odd way after our first meeting (literally lol we met in an A.A. meeting lol) .

I had 3 massive ,back to back szs. a few yrs ago and all my feelings have changed .

My enemy has become almost all electric motors and I "feel" I could show a true link to the speed the motor is (r.p.m.) and what it does to me .

Not in a synesthesia kind of way , I "feel" the humming is causing me to lose concentration and possibly be having that aura or partial sz that is so hard to document ??? I will try to say this in print for the first time 

The older tape deck will not bother me BUT the newer c.d. player will and I have not even plugged in a newer d.v.d player because the brrrrrrrr. bzzzzzzzzzzzz. it makes can cause feelings in my left side similar to what a stroke victim would say to an E.R. worker. 

My table saw doesn't bother me but my newer high speed band saw causes a background HMMMMMMMM. that only me and my small terrier seem to notice ? many of these motors (tools) have caused something I describe as a fear factor in me (panic attack) so bad I have NOT used them in several years and am considering selling most of my wood shop? 

I can also say that I can "feel" a lot of new cars and for the next few days I will be able to detect numerous humming sounds from newer cars BUT with the motor,exhaust ,and transmission as the background and the electronics as the primary noise I hear AND FEEL. 

I also understand that none of this has any thing to do with my primary hearing and have been shown it is all "literally" in my head lol. I also have severe vertigo and a constant humming in my ears that is separate from the tinnitus that I experience from these newest meds.

I have always been highly sensitive to vacuums lol and my former wife was the only one to understand this AND claims to have seen me get a headache lol when the vacuum started .

The synesthesia effect I have is different than the extreme increase in my hearing . I do understand the connection between my smell and my other feelings though. YES I CAN HEAR THIS PAINTING LOL and on a day like today will be able to smell it ,taste it, and see it in a few 100 different colors also. lol

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2010/05/different_types_of_synaesthetic_experiences_involve_different_brain_mechanisms.php

This link connects to a few 100 pgs. of some of the better chatter on this subject.

I have started trying to find the connection between my szs. and my sisters migraines but have not spent any time talking with her about her feelings or heightened perception of anything.

I have often over the past 10 or 15 yrs used psychedelic drugs and their effects as ways to describe how I feel when I am in different postictal stages. lol and now even have several professionals using this as a reference .

Because the "in tune" effects I have experienced from l.s.d. and mescaline are erierly similar to what I have felt with E.    Rick 

 

Re: Vision, Hearing, Smell, other Senses Heightened?

Submitted by 3Hours2Live on Wed, 2010-06-02 - 05:22
Hi Rick, My seizures seemed to have started with a Long-QT syndrome in early childhood, then secondary damage causing Limbic epilepsy spreadling to Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE), then 40-50 years later, more and more frequent secondary tonic-clonics. A lot of the intermediate phenomena varied with diets, other illnesses, and medicines. Zero carbohydrate diets gave effects most closely to Narcolepsy/Cataplexy with different heightened afferent modalities as a "replacement" to seizures. Asphyxiation as part of seizures also added to the phenomena that is difficult to keep separated from direct neurological events in seizures. Everything from aspirin to opiates didn't help with my seizures, while they were labeled everything but epilepsy. Since I've been subjected to many sensation phenomena that don't seem to be officially related to TLE, I'm tempted to play with the "God Helmet" to try to induce identical TLE sensations for more hypothetical verifications on what parts are TLE. I've been reading parts of the book "Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences: Brain-State Phenomena Or Glimpses of Immortality" by Michael N. Marsh (March 2010), and the book distinguishes between many sensations that are usually just grouped together, fogging their independent causes. Chapter 8 focuses mostly on the temporal lobes, and the paradoxes with whether or not the hippocampus/amygdala are active or inactive with different sensations that are often labeled with the same labels/descriptions. Books-dot-google has parts of the book for preview: http://books.google.com/books?id=RjlD-bvGFEAC&pg=PA281&dq=ecstatic+seizures+2010&cd=1#v=onepage&q=meso-temporo-amygdaloid&f=false Whether Limbic System damages cause longer lasting disinhibition of excessive sensory levels, is left vaguely unanswered in the parts I've read so far. The "handedness" of emotions (and "character" of senses), and the rebound/overload of the Limbic System is not in focus here as much as with the "God Helmet" literature. Tadzio

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