But this retired teacher wasn't going crazy, and laboratory tests also ruled out two common culprits of hallucinations — infection and drug interactions.

"She was absolutely terrified by what she was seeing," said Dr. Bharat Kumar, an internal medicine resident at the University of Kentucky who treated the woman. In fact, the patient and her family were so concerned in the days before she came to the hospital, they asked a priest about performing an exorcism, Kumar said.

The woman drew a picture of what she saw. The faces had large teeth, eyes and ears, and a horizontally elongated shape, like a football.

That peculiar shape and the fact that the patient recognized that she was hallucinating (rather than believing the visions to be real) provided two important clues in making a diagnosis, Kumar said. He determined that the woman had condition called Charles Bonnet syndrome.

Patients with the syndrome may see small people and animals, bright moving shapes or distorted faces. These hallucinations are purely visual; no sounds accompany them.

In the woman's case, the condition developed because she had macular degeneration. Tissue within the retinas of her eyes was deteriorating, and her ability to see was declining.

Charles Bonnet syndrome results from the absence of such sensory input to the brain. "When it expects sensory input and receives nothing, it often creates its own input," Kumar explained.

The brain isn't a sophisticated computer that processes information objectively and efficiently, he said. "It's more of a wibbly-wobbly, messy-guessy ball of goo."

There is no treatment for the condition, but in many cases the hallucinations stop happening as the brain becomes used to vision loss. Patients who are very frightened might be given anti-psychotic medications, but these drugs have serious side effects and aren't appropriate for everyone.

The woman was grateful to receive her diagnosis and learn that she was not losing her mind, Kumar said. When he followed up with her three months later, she was still having the hallucinations, but they were happening less often.

A 2010 study showed that 10 to 40 percent of elderly patients with visual impairments may have Charles Bonnet syndrome.

Kumar had never before seen a patient with the condition, although he noted that it may occur more commonly than it is diagnosed. "Patients are often hesitant to say that they see things because they are afraid that they will be called crazy," he said.

The case report was published online Feb. 25 in the journal Age and Aging.

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Mr. Sandman may bring us dreams. But Mr. Alarm Clock brings us sandpaper.

At least, that’s how Shelley Hunter, a frequent late-night worker/early riser, describes that first, frightful sensation shared by many sleep-deprived folks when they wake and crack open their tired bulbs.

“It burns and feels like I have sandpaper in my eyelids. I don't feel it at any other time of day,” said Hunter, who lives in Danville, Calif., near San Francisco. “It definitely seems that lack of sleep is the cause.

“When the alarm rings at 6:30 a.m., my eyes hurt immediately,” Hunter added. “If I were to go back to sleep, the pain would be less. Sometimes I try to lay in bed for just a minute hoping that it won't feel so bad, but I rarely get that chance.”

What’s delivering that dawn dose of pepper to our peepers? Basically, it's dryness, say two medical exerts. But why does a lack of Zs dry our eyes? Two theories.

This may be all about the lacrimal gland, located just above the eyelid and just below the outside of the eyebrow. From under the skin, this lumpy-looking gland secretes tears that lubricate the eye surface, keeping it damp, glistening and healthy. It’s also wired to the brain via neurological circuitry, said Dr. Sheri Rowen, ophthalmologic surgeon and director of the eye and cosmetic surgery center at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore.

“It's related to sleep. I think it’s the same mechanism that happens when you’re up late at night and your eyes feel tired then,” Rowen said. “It may be that the lacrimal gland stops putting out tears if you don't sleep enough.

“It may involve that same circuitry: a signal that you're needing sleep,” Rowen added. “The gland says: OK, I need to get some sleep. I’m going to start shutting down so the body gets rest.' The patient can’t tolerate the burning, stinging eyes so they sleep. You can’t bypass that feeling without sleeping.”

Sore, fatigued eye muscles bolster that early-morning heated feel, said Meir Schneider, who teaches people how to improve their vision naturally. He is the founder of the School for Self-Healing, a non-profit in SanFrancisco.

“Overuse of the eyes can lead to eyestrain and cause people not to blink as often, especially if they are focused on a computer screen. Blinking allows our eyes to lubricate themselves naturally,” Schneider said. “When people do not have much sleep it often is because they have stayed up late to work or celebrate.”

So, reduced late-night blinking means the eyes were dry when they closed for the night – and they remain dry when the alarm buzzes and the lids rise.

Hunter, 45, who operates giftcardgirlfriend.com, admits “working from home causes me to stay up late on the computer. It's probably a combination of being up late and focusing on a screen well into the night.

“That's when the house is quiet, the kids are asleep, and homework is done. I am often quite tired at 9 p.m. and am certain I'll go to sleep as soon as I get the kids to bed. But then I get a second wind and sit down to my most productive hours on the computer, building my site, responding to customer requests.

“All of those things (kids, work, husband, household chores) add up to me trying to fit just one more thing in my day, which often leads to me staying up too late … and waking up with scratchy eyes.”

But there’s one more mystery to mention here: The tiny sounds made by weary bulbs. 

“Each morning, I rub my tired eyes,” said eye surgeon Rowen. “Did I mention that they squeak when I rub them?”

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By LiveScience staff

Guys' eyes are more sensitive to small details and moving objects, while women are more perceptive to color changes, according to a new vision study that suggests men and women actually do see things differently.

"As with other senses, such as hearing and the olfactory system, there are marked sex differences in vision between men and women," researcher Israel Abramov, of the City University of New York (CUNY), said in a statement. Research has shown women have more sensitive ears and sniffers than men.

"[A] recent, large review of the literature concluded that, in most cases females had better sensitivity, and discriminated and categorized odors better than males," Abramov and colleagues write Sept. 4 in the journal Biology of Sex Differences.

Abramov and his team from CUNY's Brooklyn and Hunter Colleges compared the vision of males and females over age 16 who had normal color vision and 20/20 sight — or at least 20/20 vision with glasses or contacts.

In one part of the study, the researchers asked the volunteers to describe different colors shown to them. They found that the guys required a slightly longer wavelength of a color to experience the same shade as women and the men were less able to tell the difference between hues.

Related: Your color red really could be my blue

The researchers also showed the participants images made up of light and dark bars that varied in width and alternated in color so that they appeared to flicker, a measure of participants' sensitivity to contrast. Compared with the women, the male volunteers were better able to identify the more rapidly changing images made up of thinner bars, the researchers said.

Abramov explained in a statement these elements of vision are linked to specific sets of thalamic neurons in the brain's primary visual cortex. The development of these neurons is controlled by male sex hormones called androgens when the embryo is developing into a fetus.

"We suggest that, since these neurons are guided by the cortex during embryogenesis, that testosterone plays a major role, somehow leading to different connectivity between males and females," Abramov said. "The evolutionary driving force between these differences is less clear."

Previous research found that men and women also focus differently. In experiments at the University of Southern California, researchers found that men are likely to fixate on the mouth of a person in conversation and also are more likely to be distracted by movement behind that person. Meanwhile, women tend to shift their gaze between a speaker's eyes and body, and they are more likely to be distracted by other people, the researchers found.

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People suffering from motor neuron diseases, such as ALS, often lose their ability to speak. Being unable to communicate can be frustrating and alienating. To help them, various researchers have searched for ways to help such patients “talk.”

A researcher in France taught people to write with their eyes, making it possible for people who lost the ability to speak to communicate again.  

Jean Lorenceau, director of research in cognitive neuroscience at CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research), and six others learned how to use smooth pursuit eye movements to write in cursive. Smooth pursuit eye movements are those we use to track something as it moves, like watching a car drive down the street. These movements only occur if there is something for the eye to follow.

“We have an exquisite, fast, and accurate oculomotor system that has a whole repertoire of movements,” says Lorenceau via email.

“Too bad that [the oculomotor system] is only used to see and cannot be used to act on the environment. Cursive writing is continuous, curved, and smooth, just as pursuit eye movements are, so [these] eye movements should be suitable for this activity.”

In anywhere from three to five, 30-minute training sessions (the faster the learner, the fewer training session), the subjects learned how to control their smooth eye muscle movements to write in cursive.

“We move the eyes all the time, so eye writing relies on a natural activity, although slightly unusual,” he says.

On a computer screen, Lorenceau projected a reverse phi-movement effect, an optical illusion where static objects look like they are moving, in the background as the object that the eye tracks. This allowed them to learn how to independently move their eyes using smooth pursuit eye movements.

"[The paper] presents a novel and highly innovative new technique for gaze-controlled cursive writing," explains Miriam Spering, an assistant professor in the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences perception and action at the University of British Columbia."The type of eye movement used here are so-called smooth pursuit eye movements--the eyes' main response to moving visual stimuli. Until [Lorenceau's] contribution, it was widely believed that this type of eye movement could not be controlled at will."

Lorenceau recorded the subjects, using an eye tracker, a video camera connected to a computer. As the camera films the movement in one eye, a software program tracks the position of the pupil over time and Lorenceau collects all the recorded movements and compiles them, making the letters.

While learning how to move their eyes—which Lorenceau says is similar to learning how to surf and stay on a wave—the subjects experienced frustration because they could not initially force their eyes to move how they wanted. Users cannot see what they are writing with their eyes; it can be tiring and confusing at times.

While others have designed systems that enable people to communicate with their eyes by blinking to select a letters from a screen or to surf the web, Lorenceau’s method offers something more.

“My device brings personal, creative, and emotional ways of communication, for instance the ability to sign a document using one’s signature,” he explains.

Lorenceau plans on testing this technology with people with ALS. And he is working with a French technology company to create other applications of this system so that it might be easier for people to access.  

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You’re staring at your blank computer screen when dots drift into your line of vision. They resemble specks of dust or perhaps clouds or cobwebs. Don’t panic -- you’re not seeing things. You’re witnessing eye floaters, not tricks of the eye or mind.

“Floaters are a part of the normal aging process,” says Dr. Pravin Dugel, managing partner at Retinal Consultants of Arizona in Phoenix.

Eye floaters are fibers that detach from the eye. A hollow cavity filled with a vitreous jelly, composed of 99 percent water and 1 percent collagen, lies in the center of the eye. This gel helps give eyes their round shape and aids in seeing. As we age, the vitreous liquefies and pieces of it begin to release from the back wall of the eye. The debris floats across the field of vision, causing people to see dots, flies, cobwebs, or clouds.

“You can think of [floaters] as UFOs floating in the eye,” explains Dr. Abdhish R. Bhavsar, director of clinical research at the Retina Center of Minnesota. He explains that unlike UFOs, physicians know what floaters are, but like UFOs they often appear differently based on who sees them. 

While it seems that floaters glide across the front of the eye, they’re actually drifting through the eye. It’s the shadow of the fibers reflecting on the retina that people see. 

Although eye floaters don’t occur in everyone, at least 60 percent of people experience them by age 65, says Dugel. Those who have had cataract surgery or have severe nearsightedness might experience eye floaters earlier in life. People who are nearsighted (or myopic) have longer eyeballs, and the vitreous gel stretches more in myopic eyes than in an eye with either normal vision or farsightedness.

Bhavsar notes that sometimes people experience vitreous detaching, but do not see floaters while others see a large number of floaters while the vitreous shedding is minimal.

Even though both doctors stress that eye floaters should not be cause for concern, they do recommend people go for eye exams if there is a sudden explosion in the number of floaters or flashing lights accompany the dots.

“In some people as that jelly peels off it’s like Velcro peeling off … it pulls on the retina and it causes a tear,” Dugel says.

If the retina tears, ophthalmologists can repair it, using lasers or cyrotherapy, which involves freezing, and can prevent the retina from detaching from the eye. If the retina does dislodge, doctors must perform surgery to repair it.

But for most people, floaters are simply an annoyance. In very rare cases, ophthalmologists perform surgery to remove the vitreous, but for majority of patients, the floaters settle to the bottom of the eye after time and cause no other problem. 

“In the absence of all those other medical conditions, [floaters] are a nuisance and they can affect people in varying [degrees],” says Bhavsar.

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Christopher Polk / Getty Images

Call it the great one-day (we hope) lazy eye panic.

It started, apparently, with a story in the Australian tabloid Daily Telegraph, which quoted an Aussie eye doctor as indicting the hair-over-one-eye hairstyles of Cameron Diaz and Nicole Richie (those of us into old movies prefer Veronica Lake), and countless emo boys and girls, as causing lazy eye, or amblyopia.   

Then the story made its way to The Huffington Post. By the time msnbc.com contacted Dr. Leonard Press, the New Jersey eye specialist who co-authored the clinical practice guidelines on amblyopia for the American Optometric Association, the assistant who picked up the phone said “You mean the hair-over-the-eyes thing?”

Press could barely suppress a chuckle.

Amblyopia, a condition of reduced vision in which the brain does not recognize some or all of the information the eye sees, is indeed a serious eye problem, he said, and one of the reasons it’s serious is that, if left untreated in children younger than 7 years old, a very concerted, sometimes difficult, effort has to be made to correct the lazy eye. That’s because after about age 7, the neural and optical mechanisms involved have been well established, and changing them is tough going.

That’s exactly the reason why Nicole Richie is safe.

“The story would only be true,” he explained, “if you had somebody young enough, and if that person never looked out of that eye -- if it was blocked 24-7. The reason it’s false is that you don’t have that constant deprivation.”

The visual system, Press said, “is so well-established” after childhood, that “combing your hair over your eye will not do anything to that system.”

So don’t worry all you emo boys and girls. By the time mother and father give in to whatever hairstyle you want, any eye problems won’t be the result of your comb-over. Laser lights, well, that could be another story.

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young, PhD., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love Sex and the Science of Attraction," (www.TheChemistryBetweenUs.com)  to be published Sept. 13.

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Since the dawn of human art-making, the divide has been clear: There are people who can effortlessly sketch an object's likeness, and people who struggle for hours just to get the angles and proportions right (by which point the picture is scarred by eraser marks, anyway). What separates the drawers from the drawer-nots?

Ongoing research is revealing the answer to this longstanding question. It seems that realistic drawing ability hinges on three factors: how a person perceives reality, how well he or she remembers visual information from one moment to the next, and which elements of an object he or she selects to actually draw.

If you're stuck on stick figures, the good news, according to researchers at the University College London, is that people can improve at all these mental processes with practice.

First, people who can't draw well aren't seeing the world as it really is. When we look at an object, our visual systems automatically misjudge such attributes as size, shape and color; research over the past three years shows at least some of these misperceptions translate into drawing errors. Paradoxically, in other circumstances the misperceptions help us make sense of the world. For example, objects appear larger when they are closer than when they are far away. Even so, the visual system practices "size constancy" by perceiving the object as being approximately one size no matter how far away it is. The visual system, "knowing" a distant object is really bigger than it appears, sends false information to the brain about what the eyeball is seeing.

People who have the most trouble judging apparent size, shape, color and brightness may also be the worst at drawing, recent research by Justin Ostrofsky and his colleagues at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York suggests. Those who draw well are better able to override these visual misperceptions and perceive what their own eyeballs are really seeing. [ Red-Green & Blue-Yellow: The Stunning Colors You Can't See ]

However, inaccurately perceiving the image is only part of the story, said Rebecca Chamberlain, a psychologist at University College London. Chamberlain and her colleagues recently conducted experiments investigating the role of visual memory in the drawing process. They believe that drawing skill results in part from an ability to remember simple relationships in an object ― such as an angle between two lines ― from the moment the angle is perceived to the moment it is drawn. Additionally, "drawing seems to involve focusing on both holistic proportional relationships as well as focus on detail isolated from the whole. Perhaps it is the ability to switch between these two modes of seeing that underpins successful drawing," Chamberlain told Life's Little Mysteries.

Furthermore, as detailed in December in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, Ostrofsky and his colleagues found significant evidence that skilled artists are better at selecting which elements of an object need to be included to convey the object's form. And once the artists have selected an important element, they are better at focusing their attention on it and ignoring extraneous details nearby.

The devil is in the details, and the researchers are still working out the interplay between all the factors that affect drawing accuracy. However, they can all be learned. "There is no doubt that practice is an important component of being able to draw," Chamberlain said. While some may be predisposed to be better at perceptual accuracy and visual memory than others, "the rest of us use tricks to emulate this." [ 6 Fun Ways to Sharpen Your Memory ]

In research presented at a recent symposium at Columbia University and soon to be published by Columbia University Press, Chamberlain and her colleagues found practicing drawing significantly improved people's abilities over time, as rated by other people who participated in the study.

Based on their research, the psychologists recommended the following techniques for getting better at drawing: Focus on scaling a drawing to fit the size of the paper; anchor an object in its surroundings by showing how it sits in space; focus on the distance between elements of the object and on their relative sizes; and focus on the size and shape of "negative space," or the empty space between parts of the object. Lastly, they recommend thinking of "lines" as what they really are — boundaries between light and dark areas.

As Chris McManus, a member of the research team, noted, "There are few human skills which don't improve with practice."

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Barf bags: They’re not just for kids anymore.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file

Are we there YET? Adults are often unpleasantly surprised to discover they can develop the queasy stomach, cold sweats, dizziness and headaches of carsickness, even if they never had it as a kid.

In fact, they never were. When we think of motion sickness, the picture that most often comes to mind may be that three-hour car trip to Grandma’s with a heaving child and no change of clothing.

Yet some adults are unpleasantly surprised to find themselves coming down with the unforgettably bad symptoms of queasy stomach, cold sweats, dizziness and headaches, even if they never got them as kids. From vision changes to pregnancy, a number of triggers can upset our finely tuned internal balance system and set sickness in motion, so to speak.

Here how it works: Humans use our eyes, ears and feet to estimate of our location and movement through space. You get a conflict when the signals disagree, which can happen to any of us if the conditions are bad enough.

“Let’s say your eyes are reading in the car, so they think you should be still, but the bouncing of the car tells your ears you’re moving,” says Timothy Hain, M.D., an otoneurologist and professor at Northwestern University Medical School.

Kids may be more prone to motion sickness simply because their ears work better; as we age we lose inner ear function, along with the tendency to hurl on a swaying boat.

Yet other hazards await adults. One often overlooked cause of persistent motion sickness may be a visual disorder -- also known as  “see-sick syndrome,” says Dan Fortenbacher, O.D., who treats the disorder at his practice in St. Joseph, MI. In these cases, an eye problem such as decreased depth perception or muscle control sends miscues to our vestibular system, a part of the inner ear and brain responsible for keeping us in balance as we go about our lives.

In many cases, patients have had vision issues since childhood, but age-related changes make it harder to compensate, Fortenbacher says.  It doesn’t take a car trip to set things off; patients may feel sick watching a movie, scanning the aisles while grocery shopping, even looking at stripes on a shirt.

“Sea sickness wasn’t an issue. My problem was being vertical. I would stand up and have to hold on because I would feel like the room was moving,” says LaReine Gretzky of Bridgman, Mich.

A stroke or bump to the head can also disturb the balance system. For Norman Greene, a television executive producer from New York, a head injury from a bad taxi accident at age 36 led to later miseries in any moving vehicle, particularly the helicopters he flies in to film.

“I discovered this when I took this little, baby roller coaster with my kid at Sesame Place. I had to sit down; I was horribly sick. I felt like I’d been tossed into a burlap bag and thrown off a bridge,” he says.

Inner ear problems like an infection or a circulatory problem can also affect the vestibular system. Seems reasonable, but experts are still puzzled as to why pregnancy and menstruation make women more prone to motion sickness.

Another double-whammy:  Migraine sufferers, who are more sensitive generally to external stimuli, are also about five times more likely to also suffer from motion sickness, Hain says. Peak ages for both maladies are parallel in females: Girls usually start getting migraines around age 12, when puberty kicks in.  There is another peak at age 35, then a second peak at age 52, around the time of menopause.

Treatment for see-sick syndrome involves eye exercises and special lenses.  For the rest of us, avoiding bumpy seats, a pre-trip heavy meal and reading can ward off the occasional travel queasiness.  And if you can, drive.

“Drivers have a big advantage in avoiding motion sickness.  Because they know where they are going, there are fewer surprise motions,” Hain says.

Do you suffer from motion sickness now -- even though you never did as a child? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment here or on Facebook; we may use your story in an upcoming msnbc.com post. 

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FeaturePics stock

Chocolate is better than carrots, for more reasons than the obvious one.

Next time you board a plane, you might want to hand the pilot a chocolate bar, just in case.

That’s because a recent study found that dark chocolate might improve your ability to see in low-contrast situations, such as poor weather.

Not only that, this study adds to previous research that suggests eating chocolate can make your brain sharper. (Don’t you just love these chocolate-is-good-for-you studies? Sign me up.) You may have already heard that dark chocolate can lower your blood pressure and also appears to have a favorable effect on cholesterol levels, platelet function and insulin sensitivity.

The authors of the latest study, from England’s University of Reading, enrolled 30 men and women ages 18 to 25 and tested their vision and thinking skills a couple of hours after they ate a regular-sized chocolate bar.

They took the tests twice, once after eating a dark chocolate bar, and once after eating a white chocolate bar. The difference between the two chocolate bars was the amount of flavanols -- a natural compound in cocoa -- they contained. Of course, the dark chocolate bar contained loads of cocoa flavanols, the white chocolate bar only a trace.

Flavanols, found in high levels in grapes, green and black teas, red wine and apples as well as cocoa, have been getting a lot of good press lately as scientists study their health benefits. Ahh, a jug of red wine, a bar of dark chocolate and thou beside me.

To avoid skewing their results, the researchers fudged when they told their subjects the purpose of the study: If the volunteers knew the focus was on cocoa flavanols, they might do better after eating the dark chocolate because they figured they were supposed to. Instead, study participants thought the researchers were investigating the impact of different kinds of fats.

Turns out the study participants did perform better on the vision tests and on some of the brain function tests after eating the dark chocolate, the authors report in the June issue of Physiology & Behavior.  They attribute their findings to cocoa flavanol’s known ability to increase blood flow to the brain, and they speculate that the stuff might also increase blood flow to the retina of the eye.

The good news is that other research suggests cocoa flavanol’s positive impact on blood flow is even greater in us folks over age 25. So the Reading researchers are conducting a similar study in older volunteers. This time they’ll add caffeine and theobromine to the white chocolate bars to make sure those stimulants from the cacao plant aren’t the real reason for dark chocolate’s brain and vision benefits.

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