TED #2: Oliver Sacks: What hallucination reveals about our minds

Sacks' opening line is "We see with the eyes, but we also see with the brain." He speaks of hallucination, perception, and imagination. Neurologist and author. The subject of example is a woman who is blind but who was seeing things. This makes me wonder, do blind people dream? What do they see when they dream? But she said its not like a dream, its more like a very boring movie. Unrelated to anythign she was thinking or doing. Some hallucinations are mobile. It seems very frightening to go though with hallucinations such as these. The Charles Bonnett syndrome is very different from the psychotic hallucinations. they interact with you unlikethe Bonnett ones that are more like watching a movie. Temporal lobe epilepsy on the other hand, is like traveling to the past to a specific moment. full of feeling, emotion, sensory effects and everything. FMRI view what parts of the brain are activated. The flow of preception is being intersected. They are nothing like dreams. In the end of his presentation, he admits to seeing osme hallucinations himself and wonders whether cave paintings were inspired by such hallucinations. This was completely fascinating.