Can someone explain Visual Snow in a nice simple way?

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Tufted Titmouse
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22 Oct 2017, 9:23 am

I have been reading a lot about ASD lately since my therapist told me I most certainly fall into the spectrum. I am being tested in a couple months time but i have been reading all about ASD for the past few weeks.

Now one thing that i'm confusing about is visual snow. Can someone tell me if this is visual snow. As an example if i look out my window at the grey sky i can see hundreds of thousands of little moving things.....i can't describe it well, almost like little ripples in a pond but in my vision, i can then sort of remove focus from the sky and almost focus on the moving things and sit staring at them for ages, its really interesting to just sit and watch the movement. Its super hard to describe......little light balls appearing and disappearing after shooting around for a few seconds.

Is that visual snow?



SplendidSnail
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22 Oct 2017, 9:28 am

I'd never heard of this before reading your post, and I definitely don't have it, but what you describe seems to agree quite well with the Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow


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Kamoku
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22 Oct 2017, 9:56 am

The same thing happens to me. Do you also get millions of little black dots too? And also visual trailing and afterimages? Many times I walk at a corner and have visual trailing of the wall.


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Tufted Titmouse
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22 Oct 2017, 10:00 am

Kamoku wrote:
The same thing happens to me. Do you also get millions of little black dots too? And also visual trailing and afterimages? Many times I walk at a corner and have visual trailing of the wall.


I would say i get a pin head size black dot and a water ripple effect around it and they dance around my vision like an insect on the top of a pond. Its so hard to describe but that's as good as i can do.

Not sure what visual trailing and after images are......is that like looking at somthing and then looking away and you can still see the image? I get that from time to time but i get the "snow" ALL the time. I thought it was normal until i read this forum.



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22 Oct 2017, 10:21 am

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_field_entoptic_phenomenon

Something like this in the picture, I suppose.

Yes, that's afterimages. Visual trailing is like, when you move you hand, you can see your hand have a "trail" behind it.

Off topic, I see that your avatar has a budgerigar. Do you own one?


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Tufted Titmouse
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22 Oct 2017, 10:27 am

Kamoku wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_field_entoptic_phenomenon

Something like this in the picture, I suppose.

Yes, that's afterimages. Visual trailing is like, when you move you hand, you can see your hand have a "trail" behind it.

Off topic, I see that your avatar has a budgerigar. Do you own one?


Yes thats my budgie, called Dicky, he's sitting next to me right now!

That picture is exactly what i get! So is that the fabled visual snow everyone talks about? I initially thought i didn't have it because i pictured static on the TV. I would rename in visual tadpoles!



Kamoku
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22 Oct 2017, 10:37 am

He's very cute! I have two budgerigars. I'm still trying to tame them, but their getting there.

Everyone's symptoms are different. Some visual snow might be more prominent than other's. Wikipedia says that the white dots you see when you look at the sky, are white blood cells moving.


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Embla
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22 Oct 2017, 11:49 am

I always thought that those white spots (when looking at the sky) were scratches on the eye. I have no idea where I got that information xD

Those white spots are very different from that other thing I get (supposedly visual snow?). They are like tiny explosions, normally like dots or short straight lines, in black and white. I always get them for a short while after running or lifting something heavy, or when I come up after being upside down (I do a lot of handstands) or look away from the computer after having looked at it for a long time. Sometimes they appear unprovoked.



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22 Oct 2017, 11:58 am

Oh! Just saw the "Blue field entoptic phenomenon"-picture! It's exactly like that for me too! I guess it wasn't visual snow after all.



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22 Oct 2017, 12:20 pm

Embla wrote:
Oh! Just saw the "Blue field entoptic phenomenon"-picture! It's exactly like that for me too! I guess it wasn't visual snow after all.


I seem to get that phenomenon on any and all surfaces, the more solid the colour the more pronounced it is so i have no clue what I should class that, is that visual snow or what.....its so hard to describe so im having a hard time pinpointing terminologies.



bicentennialman
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23 Oct 2017, 11:33 am

That's interesting. I can't recall ever seeing "visual snow," but I can see "floaters" any time I look at the sky or a blank surface. (I think most people can, but according to the Wikipedia article, it's more pronounced in nearsighted people like me.) Apparently these are pieces of a blood vessel inside my eye that naturally disintegrates while a child is developing in the womb, so they are with me for my entire life! It's amazing to me that I can see microscopic objects simply because they are so close to my retina.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater



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23 Oct 2017, 12:56 pm

bicentennialman wrote:
That's interesting. I can't recall ever seeing "visual snow," but I can see "floaters" any time I look at the sky or a blank surface. (I think most people can, but according to the Wikipedia article, it's more pronounced in nearsighted people like me.) Apparently these are pieces of a blood vessel inside my eye that naturally disintegrates while a child is developing in the womb, so they are with me for my entire life! It's amazing to me that I can see microscopic objects simply because they are so close to my retina.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater


I get floaters but those are different to the snow im thinking I have, the floaters can be moved by moving my eye but the weird static snow stuff its like looking through rain all the time, all the tiny little drips moving and i cant focus on any, it makes all surfaces look like they are moving and pulsating.



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23 Oct 2017, 4:15 pm

As I understand visual snow, it doesn't shoot around, it's...like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow - but no colors. It's just like a static overlay. Some people have it all the time, some only in the dark, or when they close their eyes. What you say sounds like...I forget the explanation - I think it has something to do with proteins in the eye? Little points of light that dart around - almost like seeing stars when your blood sugar dips, but all over your vision. If you see it when you look at someplace bright, it sounds like the latter. The former is usually only visible when you're in dim lighting.


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dragonsanddemons
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23 Oct 2017, 4:26 pm

I see lots of little dots over everything, kind of like the image in the Wikipedia article, but the dots are smaller for me, and there's less movement - they just kind of flicker a little.


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23 Oct 2017, 4:35 pm

Trum wrote:
Embla wrote:
Oh! Just saw the "Blue field entoptic phenomenon"-picture! It's exactly like that for me too! I guess it wasn't visual snow after all.


I seem to get that phenomenon on any and all surfaces, the more solid the colour the more pronounced it is so i have no clue what I should class that, is that visual snow or what.....its so hard to describe so im having a hard time pinpointing terminologies.


I have had that as well, its not always constant but I've seen it in the dark and looking at surfaces like walls and such not just when looking at the sky. So I don't think you have to be looking at a blue sky, unless there is something else that looks exactly like that.

according to the Wikipedia article on visual snow, that would look more like static.


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23 Oct 2017, 5:06 pm

AceofPens wrote:
As I understand visual snow, it doesn't shoot around, it's...like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow - but no colors. It's just like a static overlay. Some people have it all the time, some only in the dark, or when they close their eyes. What you say sounds like...I forget the explanation - I think it has something to do with proteins in the eye? Little points of light that dart around - almost like seeing stars when your blood sugar dips, but all over your vision. If you see it when you look at someplace bright, it sounds like the latter. The former is usually only visible when you're in dim lighting.


I just came across this page which i think shows the animation of Visual Snow much clearer than the wikipedia article.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-Visual-Sn ... mmon-is-it

From this animation its EXACTLY what I have, the stationary image but everything seems to have some sort of undulation behind it like pixels of a monitor going a little bit crazy. I cant explain it in my own words but that animation is what i have been trying to explain in this thread.