Acuity enhancement

Acuity enhancement can be described as an enhancement of the clearness and clarity of vision. This results in the visual details of the external environment becoming sharpened to the point where the edges of objects become perceived as extremely focused, clear, and defined. The experience of acuity enhancement can be likened to bringing a camera or projector lens that was slightly blurry into focus. At its highest level, one may experience the perception that they can now observe and comprehend their entire visual field simultaneously, including their peripheral vision. This is in contrast to a sober person, who is typically only able to perceive the small area of central vision in detail.^[1][2]

While under the influence of this effect, it is very common for people to suddenly notice patterns and details in the environment they may have never previously noticed or appreciated.^[3] For example, when looking at sceneries, nature, and everyday textures the complexity and perceived beauty of the visual input often becomes suddenly obvious.

Acuity enhancement is often accompanied by other coinciding effects such as color enhancement and pattern recognition enhancement.^[4][5] It is most commonly induced under the influence of mild dosages of psychedelic compounds, such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline. However, it can also occur to a lesser extent under the influence of certain stimulants and dissociatives such as MDMA or 3-MeO-PCP.

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Analysis

It is thought that a fundamental feature of information-processing dysfunction in both hallucinogen-induced states and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders is the inability of these people to screen out, inhibit, filter, or gate irrelevant stimuli and to attend selectively to more important features of the environment.^{[6][7][8][9][10][11]}

The CSTC model of the brain posits that the thalamus plays a key role in controlling or gating external sensory information to the conscious faculties and is thereby fundamentally involved in the regulation of a person's awareness and attention.^{[12][13][14][15]} The interruption of psychedelics to these neural pathways that inhibit the sensory gating systems^[16][17] may therefore result in an enhanced availability of sensory information which is normally filtered out by these systems. This process is likely involved in the various visual, tactile, and auditory enhancements which commonly occur when under the influence of a psychedelic experience.

Psychoactive substances

Compounds within our psychoactive substance index which may cause this effect include:

Experience reports

Anecdotal reports which describe this effect within our experience index include:

See also

• Responsible use
• Subjective effects index
• Psychedelics - Subjective effects
• Dissociatives - Subjective effects
• Deliriants - Subjective effects

External links

• Visual acuity (Wikipedia)

References