Can I Believe My Eyes?

Available for 32 days

In Can I Believe My Eyes? writer and presenter Chris Tally Evans takes a deep dive into the fascinating world of Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Through the lens of his own visual impairment Chris talks to fellow visually impaired people who have experienced this rare and sometimes misunderstood phenomenon. Enter a world in which people literally see objects transform from one thing into another and experience everything from random geometric shapes to absolutely believable images of their nearest and dearest, all genuinely seen, all genuinely not really there. And for those affected, there is often a reluctance to talk about it – some fear they are suffering some sort of metal breakdown.
If Charles Bonnet Syndrome is an everyday reality for some of us who live with visual impairment, what of other people who genuinely believe they have seen ghosts or other unexplained and contested sightings? Could Charles Bonnet Syndrome explain what is going on?
In a nutshell, Charles Bonnet Syndrome comes about when our brain is deprived of the amount of visual stimulation that it has been used to. It is our brain that transfers the impulses we receive through our eyes into that which we perceive as sight. When the brain is deprived of information, for example due to partial sight loss, it compensates, so we see what our brain thinks is really there. Sometimes the brain realises its mistake and corrects the misinformation. Other times it doesn’t and visions may persist for days or even years.

This explains why Evans continually sees his partner transform into a tree in front of his eyes, or has imagined a co-worker sitting in a room with him – only for that person to enter the room at the same time, and to experience many other haunting visions of light and colour.
Hoping for answers, Chris visits the University of Cardiff where research into the phenemonon, first identified in the 18th Century, is going on. And can state-of-the-art story-telling help him explain to others the hallucination he has?
Charles Bonnet Syndrome is an inescapable fact of Evans’s everyday life. He tried to decide whether it’s a curse or a blessing.

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