05: The Secret Life of James Thurber

James Thurber was a man, who at the age of six was impaled in his right eye by a toy arrow, and was never able to see through it again. Later on in his lifetime he would eventually lose vision in his left eye, and by age 35 his vision would have been completely deteriorated leaving him as blind as a bat. However, there was a silver lining for James Thurber’s tragic dilemma, accompanying his gradual loss of vision in his left eye, he would discover a new type of vision, one that was filled with hallucinations beyond your wildest imagination. While he could not physically see like us, he found himself a sort of never-ending daydream.

“The daydreamer must visualize the dream so vividly and insistently that it becomes, in effect, an actuality” – James Thruber

Ramachandran diagnosed James with an extraordinary form of a neurological condition labeled as Charles Bonnet syndrome (CBS). While CBS is extremely common in individuals who have endured some type of visual pathway deficit (glaucoma, cataracts, macular degradation), Thurber had a very proactive version of the disease. For patients with CBS, especially in James’ case, they see hallucinations the same way we see anything else, meaning when they close their eyes the image disappears. For example the same way we see another person, they may see a distorted caricature filled with different colors and shapes. Thurber claimed to see animals walking through cars, bridges floating away like balloons, and people as rabbits.

This extreme ability to hallucinate and see things that may not be there is assimilated to our minds ability to of “filling in” information that is not there. The same concept is seen in our natural blind spot. Our blind spot is not sensitive to light and contains no photoreceptors, but our brains will use its better judgment to fill in the void so we are not constantly subjected to avoid in our peripheral vision. These hallucinations being “auto-filled” by the brain have no boundaries, as they are capable of being in color, black & white, miniature, or gigantic, and even cartoony. As in the case discussed by Ramachandran of his patient Nancy, who due to an arteriovenous malformation zapping procedure in her visual cortex, she was left with a scotoma (partial loss of visual field) where she would see dozens of cartoons throughout her day (just like Eddie in Roger Rabbit).

While there is no cure for CBS what we’re left with is much debate about where these Bonnet hallucinations begin and end, both in humans with visual deficits seeing cartoons like Nancy, or normal humans claiming they have seen UFO’s or angles. While a third of Americans believe to have seen angels, Ramachandran offers an ocular pathology route as an explanation for many of them. So the next time you may see something terrifying or angelic, make sure it is not in your blind spot first!

There is a really cool ted talk by Oliver Sacks on the subject of Charles Bonnet syndrome. Check it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgOTaXhbqPQ