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mjw Offline OP
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There is a one word (medical?) term for the visual distortion that makes everything appear as if you're looking through the wrong end of a telescope - i.e. you can be sitting across a desk from someone, but they'll look like they're about 2 inches high and a hundred feet away from you. I found this term in a novel once and looked it up, but now I've forgotten it again, and I can't even recall the book it was in.

Can anyone help?

Thanx in advance

Mark Waddington


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wwh Offline
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Dear mjw: I've never heard of such a term, and I have a modest background in both medicine
and psychiatry. It would have to be an illusion, since there could be no genuine optical abnormality
to account for it. I cannot think of any way to search for it, but I am indeed interested.


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mjw Offline OP
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> It would have to be an illusion, since there could be no genuine optical abnormality
> to account for it.

It's definitely an illusion. It's one of the many migraine aura symptoms, if that helps track it down.

Mark Waddington


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wwh Offline
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Dear mjw: I searched for "psychiatry visual illusions" and got a site, but my browser can't
open the links. Maybe yours can. http://www.brunel.ac.uk/depts/hs/mwlinks.htm#Illusions


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mjw Offline OP
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All the links that I tried on that page gave an "unable to locate the server" response. It seems most of the servers on which the links resided have gone away.

Mark Waddington


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wwh Offline
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With "migraine" as a clue, I found another site, but it is so big, I suggest you search it
while I also do so:http://www.priory.com/halluc.htm#psycholog

And here is a fairly good glossary of psychiatric terms.Worth browsing.
http://www.abess.com/glossary.html


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old hand
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Hija Mark, this isn't a type of so-called tunnel vision is it?


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wwh Offline
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In chronic glaucoma the site of
obstruction is in the trabecular mesh work and ... loss of vision becomes so great that the
patient is reduced to tunnel vision. ...
http://www.liv.ac.uk/GeriatricMedicine/gogm15.htm


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No, I think our Australiohunnish friend is on to it. I used to get both migraines and the tunnel vision that went with them. The vision problem is not a pyschiatric issue, it's purely physical. Too many people complain of the same symptom for it to be a figment of anyone's overwrought imagination.

Many moons ago my tame quack believed that it had a lot to do with pressure on the optic centre in the brain which either constricted the signal from the eyes in some way or caused the brain to fail to process the incoming data correctly.

Whatever, it's a fair cow when it happens to you!

- Pfranz

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