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Possible relation in PAWS and HPPD?


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This article shows that stem cell therapy can fix the visual cortex but it's still in its infancy. 

http://mobile.the-scientist.com/article/47349/added-neurons-are-functionally-integrated-into-mouse-brain-circuits 

But I read something weird on Wikipedia about vs ( on the hppd Wikipedia part )

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder

'As for root cause of visual snow, some theories suggest that it is the result of thermal noise in the visual cortex or in the 'Optic Pathway' (encompassing photoreceptor cells on the retina, the optic nerve, and the optic chiasm." 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1274605/. This was the reference on Wikipedia for this theory. If it's related to retina neurons it will be even more difficult to fix coz that area is so small. I really hope this theory about vs is wrong .

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34 minutes ago, SaraSara said:

This article shows that stem cell therapy can fix the visual cortex but it's still in its infancy. 

http://mobile.the-scientist.com/article/47349/added-neurons-are-functionally-integrated-into-mouse-brain-circuits 

But I read something weird on Wikipedia about vs ( on the hppd Wikipedia part )

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder

'As for root cause of visual snow, some theories suggest that it is the result of thermal noise in the visual cortex or in the 'Optic Pathway' (encompassing photoreceptor cells on the retina, the optic nerve, and the optic chiasm." 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1274605/. This was the reference on Wikipedia for this theory. If it's related to retina neurons it will be even more difficult to fix coz that area is so small. I really hope this theory about vs is wrong .

Hmmm, it's just a theory, I also hope it's wrong haha. But the aeropsia/visual snow can also accompany tinnitus, couldn't that mean that it's more of a registration/filter issue rather then a issue in the visual cortex. It just seems like it's very heigthened brain activity in some way, but the cause or what is keeping it in full motion isn't clear. I am not very familiar with neurological science sorry haha, I'm just basing this on things I've read and some theories.

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2 hours ago, I'mNotQuiteSure said:

I think you're right. That would also explain why benzos affect the intensity for some people, and for some people not. The brain is possible to recover from a chemical imbalance, but not from neurodegeneration (maybe in a few years with very advanced technology). A chemical imbalance isn't considered as damage I believe. This would be way easier to resolve. I'm trying a lot of things to get my dopamine levels up and cortisol levels down. I feel it's improving significantly, which could conclude (not 100% sure) it's a chemical imbalance, behold in MY case, don't know if this is the case for everyone.

 

It would be a very logical conclusion because benzos can also cause it, and benzos aren't known for inserting brain damage. It truly differs from person to person. It's just a question how to get everything back in order, and that's why you really have to help your brain a lot to do so. If people can recover from strokes/benzo withdrawals with the exact same symptoms/lyme disease and some other cases, like in your case SSRI's makes me believe that HPPD can also be cured 100%! (Not sure if that's the case in every case). Remember, the brain is a very complicated organ, like I saw on some forum, the brain is a big lump of meat with electricity running through it which can be shook up real bad. But it can also be trained and altered. If these distortions can happen, there is also a way to make them reverse in some way, maybe time i guess, or a pill that we just haven't found yet. My guess is that time is the healer, and for a lot of people it really was. There are not a lot of succes stories on HPPDonline because this is a support forum rather then a forum to post succes stories. If you look around on the bluelight forum you'll find a lot more succes stories, really a LOT. But they just didn't need support forums like this or maybe left after a while. I saw a post yesterday on the bluelight forum with someone who recovered and stating the exact same thing. "Once my visual disturbances were gone I just felt normal, I completely forgot about HPPD, it's like a trauma that you don't want to look back to. But after a few years I got remembered by a friend of mine, and I thought about how I felt back then. But I'm here for you guys to show that it can happen, and I'm very happy in life. Never forget where you came from!" He wanted to help people who are suffering from it now, but that shows that even if you recovered, you just want to let it behind you.

We'll find a way!

keep your hopes up guys...

I think Sara is right in that there could be different levels of symptoms affecting different regions of the brain and different neurons. Visual snow might not be a result of neurodegeneration. It could instead be a result of a chemical imbalance only. And yet, if there's neuronal die off then there will of course be an imbalance that follows which will trigger visual snow. I'm just theorizing here but I think the idea this is multifaceted is certainly one to consider. The bottom line, however, is that visual snow and palinopsia seem to be inextricably linked to HPPD, so whatever is happening in the brain to cause other HPPD symptoms is clearly very related to whatever is causing visual snow and palinopsia. If you find the cause of one you will likely find the cause of the other. 

Let's remember though, HPPD stands for Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder, meaning HPPD technically applies more so to those who've taken hallucinogens and ended up with lasting visual and perceptual disturbances afterwords. Though many people come here without having taken hallucinogens they still have similar symptoms (some without having have taken any drugs at all!), so there's clearly a variety of differing ways people end up with similar symptoms. 

For me, I took a hit of acid two years ago and have never been the same. I was on top of the world, happier than I'd ever been in my life, and went abruptly into a living hell and altered reality after the drug. So for me, the drug was clearly the main culprit in my condition. I was "normal" before and very much not normal afterwords. However, I've steadily progressed at a minute rate consistently since that time because I haven't taken anymore drugs and I've lived a healthy lifestyle. Even when I didn't sleep for three months my condition didn't worsen. I've also thrown a million different supplements and herbs at my brain hoping at least one would give me immediate improvements and nothing really worked that way -- and yet I still kept steadily improving. 

This, to me, is the pattern of growth: steady, slow, long lasting improvement of symptoms over the course of years. This is the same pattern of improvement for most brain injuries. There is normalcy, an incident that damages the brain and a resulting period of years where the brain slowly but steadily heals. If I strictly had a chemical imbalance of neurotransmitters then surely one of the hundreds of supplements and medications I've taken would have made an immediate difference in my condition, but that was never the case. The only slight improvement I had was with benzos, but it was very subtle and nothing close to what people would refer to as "cured." My visual disturbances were all still very much there, hardly affected at all, front and center. 

Additionally, my brain fog was very telling. Brain fog is a broad term but I'm confident the type I had was caused by microglia cells which are basically the brain's first responders against damaging agents. I had severe brain fog for the first year or so but after I totally cleaned up my diet and introduced many different anti-inflammatory foods and herbs my brain fog essentially disappeared completely -- the only one of my symptoms to have abruptly ended in such extreme fashion. Microglia cells get turned on and stay turned on throughout the course of their lifetime until something acts to signal them they're not needed anymore, which I think is exactly what happened with my diet. There was damage inside my brain, microglia were going nuts, and only after I reduced my brain inflammation through healthy eating did they die off. Obviously if you suffer a brain injury you're going to have inflammation, but if you can counter that with a healthy anti-inflammatory diet then you will of course reduce that inflammation and therefore the microglia cells, which is what I think happened in my case. 

As for neurodegeneration, it can be reversed. For a long time it was believed humans only had a certain number of brain cells and that they would die off as we aged, but this has been proven incorrect. This video is a great introduction to this concept: 

 

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I really hope that visual snow is reversible without the need for stem cell therapy but it is indeed something that we all need to bear in mind .

Scientists are considering stem cell therapy in epilepsy patients since their interneurons are dead/dysfunctional.

maybe its the same in hppd or visual snow . That would explain why keppra seems to reduce the visual disturbances in some hppd/vs patients.

https://www.epilepsyresearch.org.uk/transplanting-human-nerve-cells-to-treat-epilepsy/

@K.B.Fante

Btw do u know when neurogroup will start the hppd research ? The visual snow research at Kings College is taking ages due to lack of funding:(  . Dr Goadsby and his team did a PET scan in 2014 and they're planning on doing Fmri scans in April, hopefully this will give us more insight into this horrible condition .

 

Edited by SaraSara
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I'm not going to comment on the rest of the thread, but I'd just like to fact-check comments made on this thread and other threads pertaining to neurogenesis, as it's a reasonably objective topic due to the nature of the research published. The research findings are commonly misinterpreted in various corners of the interwebs.

In the adult human brain, the evidence so far suggests neurogenesis appears to occur only in two distinct regions. 1. The dentate gyrus (part of the hippocampus); 2. the striatum (part of the basal ganglia). From a neuroscientific perspective, the latter is particularly interesting as it may be uniquely human. In most mammals, neuroblasts in the subventricular zone migrate to the olfactory bulb, where neurogenesis has been confirmed. In humans, these appear to instead migrate to the striatum, though there may be a role for the formation from local astrocytes as well. Note: this is relatively new research - the breakthrough paper relating to the striatum was released only in 2014.

Techniques used to confirm adult human neurogenesis are quite remarkable as well. For fantastic summaries, I recommend reading:

- ERNST, A. & FRISÉN, J. 2015. Adult Neurogenesis in Humans- Common and Unique Traits in Mammals. PLoS Biology, 13, e1002045.
- INTA, D., CAMERON, H. A. & GASS, P. 2015. New neurons in the adult striatum: from rodents to humans. Trends in Neurosciences, 38, 517-523.

So although it's correct to say that neurogenesis does indeed occur in the adult human brain, it would not be correct to assume that widespread neurogenesis occurs in the adult human brain outside of the distinct regions named above.

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