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Comment by Fr0styMatt88 | Hacker News Reader

So one of the things I didn’t expect when I had a detached retina…. no darkness in that eye. The big flashing and swirling blob of light was there whether my eye was open or closed, day or night. I could look at it and identify shapes like when you look at clouds.

Many, if not I think most actually blind people don’t see blackness. I’ve read many stories about varying levels of visual ‘hallucinations’. In the absence of input the brain will come up with stuff (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_release_hallucination...).

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I lost vision in my right eye after failed retina detachment surgery damaged the optic nerve. I don’t see blobs of light like you describe, though I do see a dim pattern of swirling lines when I walk into a dark room. Also, weirdly, if there’s a sudden noise while I’m in the dark, I often see a flash of light go off, like an old flashbulb. I’m guessing that’s my visual system somehow rewiring itself to other sensory input.

The other thing I found insanely wild was that if I looked at a repeating pattern and held still (like say a tiled floor or carpet), the image from my good eye would slowly start expanding over and filling in the big blind spot in my bad eye.

Also if lighting conditions were just right (mostly dim but bright enough to make out shapes like in the middle of the night with only some light coming through windows), my brain would ‘forget’ the other eye couldn’t see and it would look like I could see out of both eyes again. It was trippy as hell.

I have the same phenomena - loud sharp noise is like a flashbulb goes off. Reading another commenter mention EHS and looking it up, I don’t think that’s it either. Have had multiple RD surgeries myself. Hope your vision is otherwise stable!

> Also, weirdly, if there’s a sudden noise while I’m in the dark, I often see a flash of light go off, like an old flashbulb.

I get that same effect, and weirdly was just thinking about it earlier today. I don't have vision loss, but I do also get visual noise in low light. I never did find any good information about it. The closest I could find was exploding head syndrome, which I can't entirely rule out but seems highly unlikely.

I thought blind people don’t “see” anything at all, not even blackness. Their perception of the world is no more than what you can see out behind the back of your head. Their existence is just a bundle of senses in a void, and the occasional mental imagery.

Yeah should have been more specific there — ‘people that have lost their sight’.

Most blind people have some vision. From light, shapes, or colors. Macular degeneration limits the field of view.

There are fascinating descriptions of patient hallucinations after loss of vision in the aptly named book "Hallucinations" by Oliver Sacks.

Tons of examples, but one that many musicians with partially lost vision experienced those missing parts of their vision randomly replaced by sheet music. Stare at sheet music your whole life, and your brain starts to predict sheet music anywhere. But when they tried to play the music, it didn't make sense.

For those with complete loss of vision, the hallucinations became immersive, featuring complete scenes with people and events.

> Stare at sheet music your whole life, and your brain starts to predict sheet music anywhere.

Sounds like the Tetris effect.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

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