Tunnel form dimension

Tunnels

"I am a 25 year old white male who recently sought the medical advice of an opthalmologist due to a visual disturbance. My symptoms were a loss of peripheral vision in my left eye. It seemed as if I was peering thru a long tunnel and the outside of my visual field was obscured by blurry white areas. The visual disturbances were infrequent-about once a month, always in the same eye, and resolved in 1-2 minutes. The doctor diagnosed me with an ocular migraine. I do not usually have any other neurologic signs associated with these visual impairments such as headaches or nausea. I was told my eyes were good (20/20) and I am otherwise very healthy. The doctor said that the visual cortex of the human brain is supplied by one very specific artery and the artery is undergoing a vasospasm. He related this to a near death experince when persons see the 'bright white lights'... I was curious if others have experinced the same."

(Adam Carter, Massachusets General Hospital, Neurology Web Forum, December 19, 1996)

"I have visual 'changes' with migraine. Besides spots, specks, wavy lines which appear, I get a tunneling in my eyes and mind that makes it very difficult to read -- especially small print! For exactly the reason you say, I can only see a bit at a time, sometimes down to a letter. Needless to say, this makes it especially hard to follow a whole thought of a sentence, much less a paragraph. If I walk into new surroundings, I am unaware of anything but the thing I am looking directly at. I may not be able to describe anything in a room I was in but one item and may have only seen the woodgrain or some pattern of that and not noticed exactly what it was."

(Pb, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: How about this Migraine site?, January 24, 1998)

"My mother and brother both have eye migraines and regular migraine headaches as well. The eye migraines that my mother experiences are pain free, they appear as a lighted tunnel... My mother told me that the first bad migraine headache she got as a young girl (about 10) frightened her so badly and hurt so much that she thought she was going to die! My grandfather came in and told her to quit yelling that she 'wasn't going to die', at which she was greatly relieved! I believe that all migraine sufferers wish they could die when the pain is at it's worst!"

(Linda, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: Migraine aura??, May 9, 1998)

"Am I the only person who blacks out before my migraines? No pretty pictures or sparklies, just like a tunnel constricting down in front of me until I can't see anything, then opening up again?"

(Rebecca Schoenberg, Newsgroups: alt.callahans, Subject: Migraine Aura, February 22, 2000)

"Note, too, that migraine aura isn't just the visual flashes, but encompasses a whole array of weird and not-so-wonderful symptoms which accompany the onset of migraine. These can include mood changes, aphasia, tunnel vision, light sensitivity, sound sensitivity and a raft of others."

(Paul Tauger, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: auras, July 31, 2002)

"I get migraine aura that can be dissociated from headaches. Usualy I see blue and yellow lights, blobs and tunnels. But only when I close my eyes. Occassionally I'll see breif rainbows of brilliant colour, like oil slicks in the rain."

(Anonymous, Livejournal for Support Group for Migraine Sufferers, Subject: Weirdest migraine aura, November 23, 2005)

Tunnel experience as part of a near-death experience associated with migraines

"I get migraines. When the medicine they give me doesn't work I sometime get the near death experience. It doesn't change my life because it happens not a lot, but too often to be unusual, it's just part of a bad migraine. I'm surrounded by a darkness that is bright at the same time and all is peaceful, and it appears to be a tunnel sometimes it moves around me (which sometime is a little scary) sometimes I'm just looking at it. I don't have any other thoughts that I'm aware of just the peacefulness. (unless the tunnel moving feels scary)

I also had the same experience when I was hit by a car in second grade. I gradually woke up from it and everything hurt I shut my eyes to try to return to the calm and heard a man say 'You made it this far, don't leave me.' And this woke me up and I was then fully in the ambulance with the EMS guys.

From my experience I think NDE is a way the body and mind cope with intense pain, to help the body deal with the experience.

I just don't think that NDE is a good way to go after the question of God or of life after death."

(Lisa Smith, Omidyar Network, Groups – Religion – Discussion, Subject: Does God exist?, April 24, 2005)

"Since I get them when I'm not near death my guess is that they may happen at other times and their evolutionary benefit is such that you survive the experience. And maybe feel a relief toward moving forward. I guess in thinking more I almost always get the experience near the end of a migraine and I do associate it with the relief I feel at the end of the migraine when I'm ready to function again. It could be coming from the experience and not just the end of the pain."

(Lisa Smith, Omidyar Network, Groups – Religion – Discussion, Subject: Does God exist?, April 24, 2005)

References

Podoll K, Robinson D. Migraine Art - The migraine experience from within. Neurol Psychiat Brain Res 2002; 10: 29-34.
Sacks OW. Migraine. Revised and expanded. University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford 1992.
Siegel RK, Jarvik M. Drug-induced hallucinations in animals and man. In: Siegel R, West L (eds) Hallucinations: Behavior, experience, and theory. John Wiley and Sons, New York, NY 1975, 81-161.

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