only via the aforementioned pathways... photoreceptors--> optic radiation--> LGN-->V1.
the hallucinatory phenomena probably has little to do with this pathway, and more to do with the raphe nuclei region projecting to V1.

Benzyme is almost right; the visual pathway when studied in depth is ridiculously elegant, and a careful assessment is very accurate in localising cortical (as opposed to subcortical) lesions.

photoreceptors-optic nerve-optic chiasm-optic tract-LGN (lateral geniculate nuclei)-optic radiation-primary visual cortex.

http://michaeldmann.net/pix_7/vis_field.gif

The plasticity of the central nervous system requires input to develop, hence Im not surprised that the congenitally blind may get much less elaborate hallucinosis (if any) compared to those who lost sight later.I also think that the visual association cortex which occupies the parieto-occipital area is important in generating impressive visuals; this area is anterior to the visual cortex which occupies the occipital lobe.

That guy was blind from birth but his visual cortex was fine, it was the optic nerve that wasnt working.



In otherwords, without visual input, your brain doesnt build a visual matrix for you to perceive? Is that what you are saying?

If you havent seen the human face, your brain cannot conceptualize it for you. I dont see how this would be any different in hyperspace. Now if you were to completely leave your body, to not return, you wouldnt be relying on your physical brain to process what you visualize. This is why the always blind see nothing, and the ones who had atleast a slight amount of vision at one point can only see comparative to what they have seen.

Like that girl in my link, she see's faces that she has seen before (her mother) but see's her as "forever 30" and people she has not seen before their faces are a blur.

I don't think it holds true that just because this is the case with dreaming that it should be the same with DMT. Unlike with dreams, DMT doesn't seem to be nearly as close to being based on direct experience with anything in the physical world as much as is the case for dreams. Secondly, and I'll see if I can find the study, there was a study done comparing imaging of brain activity with ayahuasca and dreaming. It was found that in the case of ayahuasca, the brain was behaving as if it were perceiving something "real" and external, as if with open eyes. In the case of dreaming, it appears to be more similar to closed eyed imagination. So I think it's a faulty analogy to compare these two here. Especially given that the blind reddit musician did report having colorful and geometric imagery.

Found the article

The ayahuasca study and the dreaming study were two separate studies done by the same scientists. I know the dreaming one is on there somewhere too.

The blind reddit musician reported along the same lines as did the girl and her dreams. They both have slight visual ability. Yet one with LSD and the other with just dreams. Now I am completely hypothesizing, just to make that clear. But they both saw to their level of visual experience.

The test with the aya compared to dreaming reads to me like I said. your having a partial out of body experience, it may seem like your completely out but you are still attached in one way or another, I dont see how your body could live without the soul (i dont know what to call it). I believe it most likely is a real experience, BUT you are still using your brain to percieve this.

So in other words, your energy goes somewhere but has to report the info you experienced to your body, your brain, and then you remember it. How can you perceive something that you cant visualize in your own mind without drugs, after having taken them?

This is all completely hypothetical, both what you and I are hypothesizing.



THANK YOU, I have been wanting to read this for awhile now.

They did say this in that article though, "However, he says it's difficult to pin down whether the eyes-closed responses on the drug are quantitatively the same as normal, eyes-open neural activity." So yes and no

I hope this question is not perceived as being in bad taste. It is something I have wondered about for years, but until I found the Nexus I had no where to querry this.

Knowing what a blind person experiences on DMT would go a long way in clearing up, at least for me, the view that many of the images people see while on DMT are from preconceived archetypes.
Are there colors, shapes, light? Or are these things still dependent on the optic nerve even though they are seen with closed eyes?

Has anyone else ever wondered about this?

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=36983

Already underway..

WOW, I thought I was the Lone Ranger.

Thanks so much for the link.

First off, you all bring up great points and references...THANK YOU!

After readiing all your responses and links, my understanding -and again, just mine is that for the congenitally blind, there are no visuals.. now this clearly doesn't mean the DMT experience is any less powerful or real as it is for those with sight. As anrchy pointed out, our perception is still a mental process of our brain. Our "processors" have very specific roles, such as the Brodmann lobes Benzyme mentioned. If one or more of those were never functional, no memory would exist to build a mental model of for reference. Seems logical enough.

HOWEVER, non of this means a "signal" still isn't "out there". Just as no human has the ability to see radio waves, doesn't mean that they aren't all around us. Yet through external sensors we can convert them to an auditory sinal and hear them, we obviously know they are there. So it could be said that hyperspace is the signal and all our senses our the receivers... just because one receiver isn't functioning doesn't mean the data as a whole is not there. As the Ayahuasca experiment (although somewhat inconclusive) seems to support (thank you for that Global, great find!), the visual cortex is getting the signal as if it was really there, just as the auditory cortex is most likely doing the same. It would be VERY interesting to see if an MRI scan could one day determine which lobe leads the other...does the cognitive frontal lobe fire off before the temporal and occipital lobes, or the other way around..... hmmmmm.

But then again it could all just be in our heads! Hahahaha... (maddenig laugh ) .... silly human, looking for answers.

Thanks again for some great dialog...you guys f'ing rule

im guessing it would be like very powerful closed eye visuals

that would probably be a good guess

How funny is that... we must be on the same wavelenth or something (i posted the other thread you were refered to) and check out our handles... not too far off

Hope the thread brought u some answers or mabe more questions

I asked a blind woman in a bar last night if she had ever done any psychedelics. "Shrooms once" she replied. I asked her about the visuals... she said while under the influence she thought she could see, and it scared her. She also had a bad trip due to the people she was around. I didn't get a chance to ask her further questions, but she did mention she's never had sight.

If we take this woman, plus the blind musician from reddit, who have both never had vision, then perhaps we can begin to put to bed the myth that the congenitally blind won't have visuals in their psychedelic experience. I'm not saying that there aren't congenitally blind people out there who will never have visuals in the experience, just that it isn't impossible, and perhaps we should stop blindly repeating it.

This is a very interesting thread, I found myself wondering what a DMT vision would look like for a color blind person. But full on blindness is even more fascinating.

Many blind people can see. They just don't use their eyes. Very often they use sonar instead.

I know this thread is old, but after thorughy reading through it I feel that I have something to offer. Unfortunatly, I believe strongly if the blind could see visuals then the use of entheogens would be common practice and scientific study in this day in age, in fact the blind could possibly be cured at this point. Humans have been using entheogens for far too long for their to not have been developments in psychedelics in this aspect of medicine. Just a thought.

I do however sincerely hope I am wrong or my logic is flawed here.

Pure speculation is flimsy territory.

Thanks for sharing the ted video! awesome talk!