Has anyone every experienced this? What is it? Zoomed out vision...

G

GBlue

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If this is in the wrong forum/area, let me know, and i'll post elsewhere.

ometimes, when I am talking to someone - usually when I am being lectured - the person seems to look fine until something strange begins to happen; The person seems to get smaller and smaller - or more precisely, it seems as though my field of optical awareness (which is usually something like 5-10 degrees in a circle in the direction you look at) gets much larger, effectively making the person seem smaller by making him/her take up a smaller fraction of the field.
Once this happens, if I ignore it, it goes away within a few minutes, but if I pay attention to it, by concentrating on how small things look, and visualizing them becoming smaller, this feeling stays (i have held it for about 10 minutes, and then got bored).
When this occurs, besides the region of optical awareness getting bigger, my depth perception changes, and becomes more sensitive. What i mean, is that everything seems to be farther away then normal, which is especially noticeable if I try to walk - it feels as though my feet are soo far away, even though I have no problem walking. By more sensitive, I mean that I feel the difference between the distances of various objects from me.
All in all, it feels very cool, and I feel very focused and tranquil - almost as if time seems to slow down, but not really. (I still feel 1 second per second, but it seems that if need be, I would be able to act and react faster). I find that it would be very interesting to play games or sports using this mode of vision/mental state, and would like to know more about it.
Is there any name for it?
Has anyone else felt this way?
Is it possible to control, sustain, and etc, for any period of time.
And any other information would by nice.

The closest thing i found was objective vertigo;
from wiki:
"The dolly zoom is commonly used by filmmakers to represent the sensation of vertigo, a "falling away from oneself feeling", feeling of unreality"
Not very similiar to dolly zooming....but "falling away from oneself feeling" seems to get pretty close.

its not a problem, and i don't feel bad at all when it happens. My perception is perfectly fine, if not well above average - i play racquetball, ping pong, pool, tennis, and have no problems with perception.
I haven't taken, nor will ever take non medical drugs.

and my peripheral vision isn't changing...since this effect has been observed by me many years already, and it occurs, and then goes away. Everything returns to normal.
I'm just interested in finding out more about it so that perhaps I can learn what exactly causes it and if I can turn it on and off at will.

Sorry, but i'm not looking for anything philosophic, or religious, or spiritual in any matter. I'm looking for either a biological explanation, or a psychological explanation.

its not a problem. My vision is 20/20
 
I don't have any answers for you, but I thought I'd share a similar experience I have had. Not quite the same, but a sort of perceptual size distortion.

Ever since my kids were born, when I have the chance to just gaze at them, usually when I'm feeding them or putting them to bed, they sometimes appear (for lack of a better term) larger than life. Kind of the opposite of what you describe. I almost feel like I'm hallucinating, but nothing about them is distorted. While you said the person takes up a smaller fraction of your field of vision, my boys take up a larger portion of mine. At first it was a really freaky feeling, and I would snap out of it for it to reoccur moments later, at which point I had to focus my eyes on something else. It happens less frequently now, but I'm not as bothered by it and when it does I can maintain the perspective for several minutes. I have no physical sensation along with it, such as vertigo.
 
It's possible that it could be a Temporal Lobe seizure. Temporal Lobe seizures (or the auras before them) seem very strange. They include visual distortions like you described- suddenly seeing things larger or smaller than they really are, deja-vu, smelling/hearing things that aren't there, time seeming to slow down or speed up, mood swings, etc. You may want to look into Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Maybe ask about your symptoms at the Epilepsy board...
 
There is something called "Alice in Wonderland Syndrome". It's associated with neurological disorders; drug induced episodes, TLE, migraines, tumors and bipolar disorder.

As you said you can will it, perhaps you're simply focusing/defocusing your eyes, albeit unconsciously.


(the medical term for "things appearing smaller" w/o eye disease is micropsia.)
 
Interesting. I don't have headaches or take drugs at all. At wikipedia it says:
"Micropsia is a neurological condition affecting human visual perception, in which objects appear smaller than normal, and the subject bigger. It is the reverse of macropsia."
But in my case, everything appears smaller.
I think it is more appropriate to imagine what I see when it happens as this:
Imagine you have a camera. The camera "sees" whatever is located in a cone of sight. Depending on the lens system used, the angle of the cone changes.
Say, an object is located a foot from the camera. And the object is a ball with diameter equaling 1 foot. If the cone is sight is angled at 45 degrees, then the object will take up the whole surface of the film, or almost, because of the circle not equaling a square...
If you make the cone angle larger, then, even though the distance between the object and the camera remained the same, the object would take up a smaller fraction of the surface of the film, and would seem to be smaller.
That is the best way I could describe what I see. I see 2 things that are most different - objects appear smaller/farther away, and the cone of vision that is in focus, appears much larger. I can almost say that I see what is near my peripherals, just as well as what's infront of me.
 
I couldn't help but point out that I've felt the exact same way. Word for word as you've described it. I also have a history of seizures, starting back in grade 11 to now. I have one about every 3 months. I get an aura before each of my seizures, its tough to describe, the best I can do is to say I get a strong feeling of deja vu. This 'simple partial seizure' is then followed by a 'complex partial seizure' where I'll walk pointless from one point to another, and I'm unable to communicate with people. It's the most frustrating feeling, because I can hear and understand what they are saying, and I know what I want to say, but I just can't for the words. Then about 5 minutes into this I'll collapse into a tonic-clonic seizure. But this 'zoomed out vision' feeling you're describing isn't one that precedes any of my seizures. I still have them, but they'll go away after about 5 minutes. But, like you, if I focus my eyes I can prolong it. Simple partial seizures, or auras, are defined as, among other things, feeling a sense of spatial distortion--things close by may appear to be at a distance. I'm not sure about you, but thats exactly how I feel when I get that 'zoomed out vision'. And I have seizures. Just something to consider.
 
I have experienced very similar sensations - although I would describe it very slightly differently, it's not quite always exactly the same.

For me - it's more like when a camera zooms out while simultaneously moving toward an object in a movie. I get a sensation like objects are much bigger than they ought to be, but they're farther away - so the resulting perspective is that everything's more or less still the same size.

It is also accompanied by a slight dizzy sensation - kind of like a switch flipped in my brain and something is not being processed quite right.

The perception thing has intrigued me, but it is also sometimes accompanied by a change in tactile sensation too. Soft things feel kinda hard. So - a pillow against my head for example is somewhat unnerving and uncomfortable. I have experienced this once when I was a kid (maybe ~13?) so strongly that it started to freak me out a little and I laid down on a hard floor until it went away because hard things still felt normal.

I'm 31 now - I recently had another perception shift a few months ago - I noted it with intrigue, waited a few minutes and it went away. It seems like if I concentrate on it, it lasts longer than if I ignore it, but that could be bogus. It happens so rarely anymore (1 or less per year), I don't have a lot of opportunity to test theories.

Anyway - I suspect it really is a Simple partial seizure. Also - I think my brother has experienced very nearly the same thing. I tried describing the tactile sensations once around him and he sorta freaked out and told me to stop describing it. It does seem like if I think about it intensely it can trigger an "episode" so maybe he's afraid to talk about it.
 
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