Wednesday,  April 2, 2014 • Vol. 16--No. 258 • 7 of 42

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patterns like tapestry all from his failing eyes. Oliver Sacks, a famous neurologist and writer, tells us that you don't have to have failing vision, and that most of us have hallucinations normally as we first close our eyes to go to sleep often with swirling patterns. The take-home message from Bonnet and Sacks is to reassure us that visual hallucinations can be very normal, simply reflecting the brain filling in when vision is diminished.
• Also, there are phantom sounds of the hearing-deprived called tinnitus, and rarely musical ear syndrome. The first is a simple bother to ignore, and the second a complex form of auditory hallucinations to admire. Apparently great composers Robert Schumann and Dmitri Schostakovich both described hearing phantom symphonies in their heads from which they drew inspiration for composing music we still hear today.
• Similarly, people who have lost a limb sometimes sense that the limb is still

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