[jongjong]

I had a similar moment when I was 16 and had my first migraine aura... Really bad one. I was looking at a billboard and I realized that I couldn't read anymore. Then I looked at people and part of their faces were missing from my field of view even though I was looking straight at them. Then I started feeling tingling in my fingers. I thought it was a stroke. No, just a bad migraine aura. I've had one every 6 to 12 months since though rarely as bad as that first one.

Coming to terms with the fallibility of your own mind is a valuable experience. I think it has helped me to be more rational. Once you accept that your mind can be dysfunctional, it becomes trivial to accept that your mind can be wrong. The way I see it, being wrong is also a temporary dysfunction of the mind.

[cjameskeller]

Wow, I've had this exact experience, as well! Two or three bad ones, with all the rest consisting of:

- a slight odd taste (this is my "early warning sign"), - then the vision loss (which is so hard to describe, because the missing portion doesn't become black/white/blurry/etc, it's just gone), - and sometimes the tingling fingers.

The worst one, which happened while I was in Spanish class at school, began with those symptoms, but then I noticed I couldn't understand the Spanish instructions on the worksheet we'd just been given, even though I'm usually good with languages. I went to read the English "cheater" instructions on the other side, and my ability to read & understand English drained away while I was in the middle of reading. I felt that something was very wrong at that point, and stood up to tell my teacher that I needed to go to the nurse, but as soon as I stood up, I realized I no longer knew how to transfer my thought into my teacher's mind (not only the ability, but even the concept of spoken language had vanished!) ...So I just sat back down and waited it out.

It is quite the experience...

[toss1]

>>a temporary dysfunction of the mind

Interesting

Seems the dysfunction could be either intrinsic, as in mis-processing data/information that is present, or extrinsic, as in not having or failing to obtain a suitable set of data/information on the topic.

Does this match your model?

[jongjong]

I believe it is a purely visual processing issue because, when I get a migraine aura, I can think and reason and communicate as normal. I walk normally too, I don't feel dizzy. It's only that parts of my visual field are missing. The missing parts seem to shift like blobs in a lava lamp so I can't just turn my eyes to 'look around them'. Also because visual info is missing (not blacked out or blurred out), it makes it impossible to figure out how much I should turn my eyes to look around 'it'... It's like a spacial distortion in my field of view. I wonder if this is a similar experience to dyslexia? Though for me it's only temporary and affects everything I see including faces... But who knows maybe dyslexics also have this issue but don't realize it because they don't know better?

I can still recognize people even though I can't see their face fully. It's like my subconscious is still seeing the full face.

[toss1]

>>It's like my subconscious is still seeing the full face.

Very interesting; that reminds me of a phenomena I learned about in a college neuroscience class, from studies of people who are cortically blind, as in their visual cortex is dead/nonfunctional, but their eyes and the rest of their brain work (e.g., from a brain injury localized to the back of their head where the visual cortex is located).

You can also present them with a forced choice test, such as a panel with big stripes either horizontal or vertical, and require them to say if it is horizontal or vertical. Of course the initial response is "I can't see it, so I can't say". But with a forced choice, they get it right something like 85% of the time — obviously far better than the chance results we'd get with blindfolded subjects.

It turns out that (at least the working understanding at the time) is that the brain has different circuits that use info from the optic nerve to tell the eyes where to track and look. E.g., this will get the eyes to track moving objects, or focus along the edges, etc. When those are still working, the brina can still somehow subconsciously access some of that knowledge from those different brain areas.

I wonder if this is relevant to the phenomena you described?

[balder1991]

I have these auras ever since young too, but it’s somewhat rare and for me it’s quite related to anxiety. It always lasts like 6-7 minutes in which I usually stop doing whatever I’m doing and prepare for a mild headache following it.