Visual Snow Syndrome

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This isn't something you can currently be diagnosed with in the United Kingdom (although it is being researched in scientific literature). But it is something I have had since being brain damaged.

I permanently feel like I am in a video game with my grainy vision.

You are not alone, I did a search and it appears common here viewtopic.php?f=3&t=220769

It is an old poll 2013, maybe you should do a new one.

I've had this for as long as I remember. Usually, I don't notice, but it depends on what I'm looking at. Sometimes I look outside at trees and I can't tell if it's raining or visual snow making things look that way.

Have you ever read "Silent snow secret snow"? Thats what the title reminded me of. You can read it here https://maggiemcneill.files.wordpress.c ... t-snow.pdf

On a different note, I remember back in high school I ran into a severely autistic and Dawns kid named Jonathan who was non-verbal (it was a normal high school its just that its sped kids went to lunch at the same yard as normal kids did thats how I saw him). The staff who took care of him told me that, as someone autistic, he "sees things in dots and spots". I have no idea how staff could know this since he is non-verbal so he can't verbalize what he sees. But thats what they told me.

The funny thing is that I learned Jonathan was autistic a week before my therapist told me I was autistic (she diagnosed me much earlier, she just didn't tell me about it till then). My first question was: "why don't I see things in dots and spots?"

I have the grainy vision too! It makes me see certain things as moving when they aren't and explains why I never got the big deal about HD. I get little silver spirals thrown into the mix if I am in a hot area too.

Life is always trippy with this syndrome. It is a constant reminder of the temporal nature of the matrix we live in:

I live with visual snow as long as I can remember and haven't realised that the way I see isn't normal until I've read about the phenomenon by accident.

There are two different types of visual snow AFAIK: colourful and black/white, more like static. I have the latter, which is theorised to stem from hyperactivity of frontal lobe. I also think that developing it later on, in adult life, can impact quality of life, but if someone has grown with it, like me, it is most often not the case.

Month ago I've started taking piracetam as a supplementary drug to lamotrigine for my LTLE and noticed that after few days, when I got "saturated" with the substance, the visual snow got significantly more intense. Now, piracetam is kind of in a weird spot, seeing that it is approved and used to treat memory issues and as anit-myoclonic drug, but there is no solid scientific evidence that it does anything and that it doesn't act like a placebo. Here I have a definitive proof that it does something because I have not expected this effect to surface at all - no one ever mentioned this mechanism, at least I haven't found any mention of this in any publication I've read before asking my neurologist about the drug.

So now I see visual snow in conditions when I've barely saw it before. When it's lights out is where the fun starts, world looks like everything is covered in a f**** glitter. But I don't mind, because I feel the drug is beneficial for my cognitive function and I can stay more focused and need less sleep. More static is low price to pay for that.

Hmm...
Mine gets worse in stress, exertion and overwhelm.

It gets even worse at times when I can't focus well and everything was too fast to process -- it's not limited to sight, but hearing seem to be as well.



My other experiences are purely physiological yet very temporary.
From rubbing my eyes, to standing up too fast.

Symptoms were developed on my teenage years, spent on playing online games all day and night with little sleep, along with myopia.

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this was very interesting. I had never heard of this before.

It’s just normal to me because I’ve never been without it. That and the tinnitus have been slowly increasing. It’s worse on dark things, it’s starting to really impede my night vision.