I remember the last time I had the flu. Headachy, weak and feeling generally crappy, there are times when I had body hallucinations. I’m specifically talking about a skewed perception of what my body was during the hallucination. For example, feeling like you had tow two1 heads: one that hurt and one that didn’t hurt.
Our perception of what our body is relies on how we feel, and pain changes that. The brain sometimes comes up with weird explanations in the form of these hallucinations. Most of the time, when the feeling passes, I have a difficult time even remembering the hallucination because I never verbalize them. That is, I didn’t analyze the feelings to the point where I remember exactly how I felt. When you verbalize something, it’s a lot easier to remember because you can remember the words you use even when the feeling passes. When the hallucination happens in the night, you don’t wake up your family and tell them what you’re feeling, or call a friend up, or write in a journal (usually).
Hallucinations in general have always fascinated me. I remember being 9 or 10 and my sister being feverish. She was talking gibberish — saying things that didn’t make any sense. My mother said my sister was hallucinating. I really wanted to ask her some questions, but she needed to get rest.
Often, neurologists learn a lot about how the brain works by what happens when it’s not working as we expect, or when parts of the brain are damaged. This is why Oliver Sacks’ books are so fascinating. When the brain is not working, you can see it as more like a machine and less like a magical source of “you.” It’s odd that broken brains are, in one sense, easier to understand.
Since no brain is perfect, we all have our own brokenness. We all have our moments when our brain plays tricks on us. And that’s when we notice that our perception of the outside world isn’t as simple as we pretend it is all day long.
1 Nice to know I still have readers on the weekends.
Posted by James at October 27, 2007 1:10 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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"For example, feeling like you had tow heads..."
You hallucinated that you were blond?
Posted by: mjfrombuffalo at October 27, 2007 1:41 PMAre you sick today, James?
Posted by: Chuck S. at October 27, 2007 2:21 PMJames is not sick.
I once hallucinated that I had a number of "selfs," and was very relieved when I got it down to two. It took me a while to realize that wasn't right.
Posted by: Maggie at October 27, 2007 2:43 PMNot sick. I did have an allergy sinus headache when I woke up, though. That's what reminded me of this. Luckily, sinus headaches are a relatively easy foe to vanquish.
I feel really bad for the folks who have migraines all the time. I get cluster headaches every other month or so, but some people have them all the time.
Posted by: James at October 27, 2007 4:02 PM