Difficulty "seeing" things in plain view

[LivingwithFibro]

Is it the same thing a wearing a watch or your glasses are in your hand and yet you look for them throughout the house? If so it runs in my family but I'm not sure if it's the same thing as what you all are describing.

I was told the fairy story as well, lol.

 

[nokmax76]

Is it the same thing a wearing a watch or your glasses are in your hand and yet you look for them throughout the house? If so it runs in my family but I'm not sure if it's the same thing as what you all are describing.

I was told the fairy story as well, lol.

I don't think it's quite the same. I believe the watch thing is a memory problem while the lack of visual recognotion is a processing problem. I have both. Not to long ago I was looking for my mobile and it was in my hand. Imagine. I used to feel really down when such things happened. Now I just laugh. I laughed long and hard and loud. So what if I was in a library at the time

The blanking of objects doesn't happen often to me but often enough to be annoying. But as Andrew said, right now we are all lucky that we are aware we have this problem and can compensate. I do worry if there will be a time when I am blind to both the objects and the problem as well.

However, I have another problem which really does worry me and I find difficult to laugh off. Sometimes, when I am looking at something I am convinced that I have seen one thing, when in actual fact the snapshot my brain has taken is totally wrong.

Example: not too long ago, one of my neighbours parked their car in someone else's drive. Because I am so used to seeing it in my neighbours drive, that is how I processed the information despite the facts in front of my eyes and that the two houses are a couple of numbers apart and quite different in style. It's as if my brain locks and sticks and hasn't the energy to compute the new information. I only realised my processing error when discussing the car with another neighbour. Yes, it was another crash and burn of social dignity but it's more troubling that I would have sworn on my life if asked in court, that the car was parked in it's usual place.

Thankfully it doesn't happen often and so far, never with the written word or people. And usually I remain alert in new or less familar environments. But I would be glad if anyone could tell me what the name of this problem is. If I can put a name to it, I can be less scared of it......

 

[alex3619]

In cognitive science this might be called a variable binding problem. However that is just a fancy name for labelling something without understanding it.

I just had this problem again. I have some antihistamines, and I was looking for them. They are always in the same place. Gone. I searched and searched. Gone. Oh, maybe I threw them out in the rubbish? I do that. I rested my hand on the area and felt something. A small blisterpack of antihistamines. I could NOT see them until after my hand was on them.

The brain has the issue that the visual image is not bound to the concept of what it is. A variable binding problem. Its just pixels, or the neurological equivalent of pixels.

The visual cortex has layers of detector systems that track edges and all sorts of things, I have not looked into this in over a decade, maybe two. The low level detectors feed into higher level ones, inferring more complex images. At some point this has feedback with our knowledge of the world. These issues lead to us not seeing reality but a brain interpreted image of reality ... which illusionists including magicians make use of.

I think part of the problem is in the visual cortex, the other part in semantic memory and how it interacts with the visual cortex.

This is all, of course, speculative. However its my current interpretation of what is happening, at least until we have better evidence or science.

 

[AlmostEasy]

I get this fairly bad. It's for me worse and has more implications than just missing things. I can look into a room and not correctly gauge the vibe or attitude, I can look at my room and not realize how messy it actually is (when it is), I don't feel the space as one unified whole, I can look at little pieces and try to compensate for it with my brain but obviously it is a gigantic malfunction.

This has improved with adderall, which I dont' take chronically only vary sparingly PRN. I don't want to push anyone for it as I would prefer to never use it but I can't deny how beneficial it is to me when I use it. My QoL skyrockets, my cognitive function skyrockets. I still have issues of course as it's not all dopamine but it CLEARLY shows me my dopamine is severely low.

Very interesting about the Low Dose Naltrexone, I'm going to look into that.

 

[IntelligentImpulse]

When the symptoms are particularly bad, the brain fog prevents most of my ability to comprehend things properly. Trace over symptoms like mental blanks are fairly common. Some of it is a question of willpower to remain mentally alert and making an effort to recognize everything around me consciously as opposed to subconsciously.

Overall, it is a bit of a question of my overall state, not a one-off event preventing recognition.

 

[MeSci]

I never used to have this problem. But now it happens all the time. I can be looking for something that is in plain view in front of me on the table but my brain doesn't register it. Last night is an example. I could not detect a bottle of pills that was sitting right in front of me. I was about to get up and look in another room, but this problem is so frequent now I decided the pills could be right where I was looking. And there they were.

There is some kind of recognition problem. My eyes can pass right over something but it doesn't register. Very frustrating. But I have a feeling this is something not rare, and some people have this all their lives.

BTW, I'm not talking about remembering where I put something. I'm talking about an object not registering despite my eyes scanning it.

Yes, I often get this.

 

[Andrew]

I realize this is an old thread, but I just have to say that this problem is getting incredibly frustrating. I lost something for more than a week and it turned out to be sitting on top of a low book case in my living room in plain view. Not only was it in plain view, but the bookcase is opposite my couch, and I'm glancing over there all the time.

 

[Mel9]

I actually think this is common in long term patients. It happens to many of us. I think its rarer in new patients. I think it represents a brain dysfunction.

It happened to me often after 3 years of illness. Very scary feeling leading to much confusion. Since I started antibiotics four months ago it has gone away.

 

[anciendaze]

Just want to chime in that this is a serious problem for me, and one reason I avoid new and confusing environments.

Part of the problem is with some attention mechanism, which fails to detect things you can actually see as objects rather than images, but there is another problem which turns up when my blood pressure/sugar runs low: I get large scotomas where my vision simply doesn't work. (Negative migraine auras?) You can't immediately detect these because parts of the brain which are way below consciousness fill in the region with a plausible extrapolation. I've even seen a wallpaper pattern fill in to hide a large sign on the wall of a restaurant. That scared me because I had just been driving, and the scotoma covered about 1/3 of my visual field when I tested it. I now test myself to make sure I am not experiencing drop-outs in my visual field before I get behind the wheel.

I believe there are two distinct problems, both of which indicate that part of the brain has temporarily shut down.

 

[Andrew]

It happened to me often after 3 years of illness. Very scary feeling leading to much confusion. Since I started antibiotics four months ago it has gone away.

Can you give us some details about the antibiotics (dose, duration, how you happen to get these)

 

[Mel9]

Can you give us some details about the antibiotics (dose, duration, how you happen to get these)

I tested positive for Borrelia, cause of Lyme diseae.

My LLD prescribed clarithromycin, zinnat and Nilstat.

Later I started taking anti 'biofilm, medication.