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There is no drug capable of curing HPPD.


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HPPD is a neurological dysfunction. Throwing molecules at your neurons won't fix them. It's like trying to fix a damaged computer punching it until it rewires by itself. Won't work. Use our brains. There is still hope, but not on drugs. Only nanotechnology, assossiated with vast knowledge in brain inner workings can be useful. That's why I ask. Let's collaborate with this cause.

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HPPD is a neurological dysfunction. Throwing molecules at your neurons won't fix them. It's like trying to fix a damaged computer punching it until it rewires by itself

At the heart of rehabilitative exercises/therapy/whatever is to rebuilt/relearn activities and thinking patterns. Drugs CAN be used therapeutically.

A personal experience: Used to see in frames for over a year. The frames were about 1 sec apart. Within 4 hours of 75mg Wellbutrin CR (dopamine and norepinephrine agonist) frames noticeably improved. In 3 days frames were about 1/2 sec apart. On 6th day increased dose to 150mg. By day 7 frames about 1/8 sec. On 10th day discontinued altogether (dose too high causing other problems). Frame problem slowly degraded (at rate of drug half-life) but never got worse than about 1/4 sec.

How did this work? Did it ‘un-stuck’ ‘jammed’ neural circuits? Did it stimulate growth and repair? Did it ‘knock-out’ some sort of toxin? I don’t know but would put my money on #1 and 2 because this is characteristic of nerve cells.

Today (18 months later) frame-rate is tight enough that I would never have ever guessed it is frames. More like drunkish

Another personal experience: Pulse dosing B12 with GPC and MSM. This improved visual acuity (but didn’t affect frames). This also repaired nerve damage to left fingers – despite being told by a neurologist that too much time had gone by for it to ever repair.

Moral of story – you just have to try things (but not fry things). Drugs can help fix things.

 

Why do you think molecules could be capable of intelligently rewiring synapses, resynthetizing dead neurons and messing with receptors to give your brain to the exact structure it had before HPPD?

Drugs can NOT intelligently rewire synapses. But your brain design (DNA) will try to do its best. If you feed and stimulate it, it will do even better.

Rule of Thumb: Nerve repair is NEVER the same as the original. But if damage isn’t too extensive, you won’t even notice the difference.

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What do you mean with seeing in frames? You could only see 1 image per second? Seriously? Why?

Anyway I think those neurons of our visual cortex are made when we born and never changed. They hold built-in structures that should not be changed during your lifetime (why would we need to change the way we process visual stimuli). So I believe they are not replicating at all.

It's just a guess I don't know anything about neurology, but I can't imagine how our vision could work if those neurons didn't hold a very reliable anti-replication mechanism.

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neurons … hold built-in structures that should not be changed during your lifetime … but I can't imagine how our vision could work if those neurons didn't hold a very reliable anti-replication mechanism.

Love your logic and thinking! And you are very right about something here.

Nearly all cells in the body grow old and replace themselves. The brain is different (with very minor exceptions) – it does NOT replace its neurons, but must keep them alive and healthy. This is because of all the complex synaptic connections that would be lost if a neuron replaces its predecessor (think what would happen to memory when a neuron actually dies).

So brain growth (learning) is not through cell growth/replacement but through the growth of new synaptic connections and changes in existing synaptic connections.

What do you mean with seeing in frames? You could only see 1 image per second? Seriously?

Yes, 1 image per second. Like a slow web ‘network’ meeting.

For me, there would be a frame (whole picture), then (when someone was moving) a perceptible blur (comet trail?) then another whole frame, …

A couple medical words for this sort a thing are Akinetopsia and Dyskinetopsia

There are even some people who suffer multiple frames (old one hang around). So a guy is watching a dog running and it becomes a bunch of dogs running. See: http://www.ajo.com/article/S0002-9394(99)00177-4/abstract and http://www.nature.com/eye/journal/v17/n9/full/6700551a.html

Why?

Vision is a time-consuming task, so the brain pre-processes the next frame (what you are viewing) while still working on the older one(s).

The brain makes this all smooth so people don’t normally see in frames. Something to consider:

Old silent movies 18 frames / sec

Modern films 24 frames / sec

TV (in USA) 30 frames / sec

TV (in UK) 25 frames / sec

Yet (with possible exception of old silent movies) you do not notice flicker or ‘jumping’ movement

Vision is a massive process and there are actually multiple systems involved.

The nerve fibers from the peripheral retina go to a fast section called Ambient Visual Processing. This is foundational for much cognition since it literally feed-forwards its info to 99% of the Cortex.

This section is responsible for orienting a person in space and time. It is how you ‘feel’. It allows you to jump and respond to a ‘fast ball’ (feeds into the Amygdala for sudden ‘flight/fight’ response).

The nerve fibers from the central retina go to the Focal Visual Processing centers. This is where you ‘think’.

When the ambient system is struggling, then the focal system tries to compensate and you get all sorts of problems. Frames, stationary objects ‘move’ or wiggle, reading is difficult, walls seem bowed, fatigue, anxiety, …

Also, since you see with two eyeballs, both sets of information need to be processed and coordinated. Problems here (binocular convergence) can further delay and confuse vision.

So … lots of weird, complicated stuff going on … it is amazing that it works so well and that we can 'see' at all

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Also, we still know very little about how the brain processes and interprets visual data, this is indicated by how little information there is about visual dysfunctions. Until very recently, symptoms such as the ones Visual listed were virtually unheard of, but with the advent of technology things will change. The thing about the unknown is as time progresses we will have answers. Right now we don't even know what causes HPPD, let alone what takes to treat it. But with the disorder more in the eye of the community and ever increasing advances in medical tech, I can definatly see it reliably treatable, if not even able to be cured. And why is windscar so sure this is an issue of nerve damage, perhaps the hallucinagens just increased or decreased the release of some neurotransmitter in the brain. Perhaps, the hallucinagenic substance hyperstimulated the visual part of the brain, leading to some kind of continuous visual seizure, like shoalin mentioned. People who suffer from partial seizures complain of the same kind of visual disturbances while seizing. Perhaps, it is that. My point is that we don't know what causes HPPD, so let's not resort to the omg my brain is broke postulation, especially when the little we do know about this disorder does not lend itself to some massive meltdown of the brain

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Also, we still know very little about how the brain processes and interprets visual data, this is indicated by how little information there is about visual dysfunctions. Until very recently, symptoms such as the ones Visual listed were virtually unheard of, but with the advent of technology things will change. The thing about the unknown is as time progresses we will have answers. Right now we don't even know what causes HPPD, let alone what takes to treat it. But with the disorder more in the eye of the community and ever increasing advances in medical tech, I can definatly see it reliably treatable, if not even able to be cured. And why is windscar so sure this is an issue of nerve damage, perhaps the hallucinagens just increased or decreased the release of some neurotransmitter in the brain. Perhaps, the hallucinagenic substance hyperstimulated the visual part of the brain, leading to some kind of continuous visual seizure, like shoalin mentioned. People who suffer from partial seizures complain of the same kind of visual disturbances while seizing. Perhaps, it is that. My point is that we don't know what causes HPPD, so let's not resort to the omg my brain is broke postulation, especially when the little we do know about this disorder does not lend itself to some massive meltdown of the brain

Visual is right on with his assessment of the situation. Nerve cells dont simply die without specific things happening. People who go blind due to blunt trauma to the back of the head is because very high amounts of brain cells have died off. As far as I know...No one with HPPD is blind in the technical sense of the term.

The more accurate question to approach the problem with would be "What has changed in my brain to make my vision completely change in a very short amount of time?" I don't have the answer to this question. I dont know if anyone has the answer to it right now. That doesn't mean that very complicated nanotechnology applied to medicine, which is realistically atleast 20 years off from being applicable to everyday people like us, is the only solution.

Pharmacology can work by strengthening synaptic connections or by modifying/forcing the brain to make a change in an area that it is lacking specific functions. Hell this is even done without the use of drugs.

Soldiers coming home from war that have lost brain functioning due to trauma go through intense therapy to reform synaptic connections in certain regions of the brain that were damaged. It's been scientifically proven that brain cells are exceptionally good at regrowing.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yet there have been cases here and there of medications (albeit very few cases) curing people to nearly about 99%

I think it comes down to the etiology of each person, some treatments help for some, and for some it exacerbates their symptoms.

Also, doesn't the fact some drugs can cause neuroplasticity nullify this theory?

I'm sure if they can teach stroke victims that were told they would never be able to walk again through therapy and the use of drugs I'm sure the same can be done for us, obviously a therpay/rehab of sorts need to be found or even a drug it self. There are many things that could come along that benefit us that we haven't even thought of. But at the moment drugs are the only intervention that has shown success, be it temporary, better than nothing.

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