I’ve just had an interesting experience while watching TV (The Mentalist, season 1, episode 2). It’s something that appears to have been Kaleidiscopic Vision. Here’s how I’ve described it to Julia, trying to work out how this thing came about: my peripheral vision was fine, so was the centre of my vision, but there were two circles around the centre that were flickering like small sticks, in all colours of the rainbow.

I was trying to work out if this phenomenon appeared in one eye or on both, which was a little tricky as the image I was seeing was an amalgamation of both eyes. Closing either one of them revealed that it did not make a difference, so bizarrely it was happening on both eyes. This in turn seemed to suggest that it was not eye related, but rather brain related. In computer terms, the visual processing happens after signals are being received from both eyes.

Closing my eyes did not seam to have an impact as the little rainbow sticks kept dancing in a circle in the dark. There were no accompanying symptoms like a headache or migraine, nor did I feel dizzy. I had a crazing for salty snacks if that’s a symptom, which I duly squashed with a handful of cheesy Chex Mix.

A quick web search revealed the possible name for my experience: Kaleidoscopic Vision. While it could be related to something more serious, the articles suggest it’ll disappear within 30 minutes. And right they were: it occurred about halfway through that Mentalist episode, and disappeared about 10 minutes into the next, rather rapidly I might add. as if someone had flicked a switch.

Although causes may vary, one article suggested this may be related to caffeine withdrawal (which I’ve had recently), as well as hyper stimulation. That too is true: having had my head buried rather deep in two complex 3D programmes yesterday (CLO and Marvelous Designer), while dealing with a bit of web server administration. Today I was involved involved in the production of a complex YouTube video about something called the Filament Render Engine in DAZ Studio. Am I using my brain too much perhaps?

I took two aspirin just in case this thing would turn into a headache, a trick I’ve learnt from my dentist Dr. Oliver, after he removed my wisdom teeth: Rather than wait for the pain, take pain killers before the onset and things will be much more tolerable. Just in case.

I’ll see how this thing pans out. The phenomenon is gone for now, but I thought I’d make a quick note here to have a sequence of events and a little context. I’ll keep you posted if it happens again, or in fact if anything else health related is happening in my life.