As you can see from my ResearchGate profile, I have explored various explanations for the underlying mechanism that allows me to have cannabinoid-induced visual experiences as a totally blind person, and what, exactly, these experiences are. I have mined the literature and collected quantitative data on myself, but neither of these paths have given me any conclusive answers. Despite the fact that I have some knowledge of neuroscience and psychology, I am unable to translate the metaphorical nature of my experience into established neuroscientific phenomena.
It is very likely that in the coming weeks, I will be tackling this problem from an engineering vantage point: I will be working with collaborators to create a sensory substitution device that provides information about the depth of objects, rather than their appearance, by moving the hands closer together and further apart, as if they were eyes, thereby replicating an element of my cannabinoid-induced visual experiences. However, I am concerned that it would be a mistake to put the cognitive neuroscientific aspects of this project aside. For this reason, I am seeking a phenomenologist with expertise in cognitive science and visual perception. I am hoping that by telling this person my story, how I changed from a blind person with no awareness of visual concepts to a person who is learning to see, the two of us will come to interesting conclusions that could both feed into the engineering project and could shed some light on human psychology. Questions we might grapple with include:
Do properties of saccades (vertical vs. horizontal, speed, amplitude, etc) have any relationship to properties of physical objects in the world? If so, could an overlap between the properties of saccades and the properties of physical objects explain my subjective sensation of drawing the world with my eyes?
How do touch, proprioception, vestibular information and visual feedback come together to form a visual-like experience for blind people with rudimentary access to and understanding of sight? How do temporal dynamics play a role in determining how disparate strands of sensory information bind together, and how could knowledge about these dynamics inform the creation of a novel sensory substitution device?
When a blind person is put in a position where she can abandon the Bayesian prior that visual information is unavailable to her or unreliable or both, how are her thoughts affected? What new kinds of thoughts can she access in this altered state?
What are the psychological consequences for a totally blind person transitioning to sightedness? What kinds of tools would she need to come to terms with her new reality?
What does a process of learning to see look like, and what type of people are in the best position to teach that process?
What would it look like if the process of learning to see was placed in an educational context, rather than a medical/clinical/rehabilitative one? What principles from the field of education could be used to inform this process?
I could see a paper (or several papers) coming out of these discussions.
How would I go about finding a person with the relevant expertise? Are there places I could post this description (other websites, list-servs, etc.)? Maybe this would be a project for a graduate student? Trying to find someone with enough time/bandwidth to take this on.
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