I think Kohberger concocted claims of visual snow to discuss his absence of emotional connection with others.
He claims that fuzzy vision means that others are video game people rather than real people. That's absurd.
The below comments are attributed to Kohberger. He
seems to be using a symptom that is often associated with migraine to describe his absence of emotional connection to others; to objectify them and portray them as two dimensional people.
Visual snow and ocular migraine (also known by other names) is a temporary visual disturbance (typically lasting 20 minutes, followed by head pain) that interferes with reading, driving, doing anything that relies on vision. I have personal experience with this after a concussion. It is a type of migraine that has absolutely nothing to do with perceptions of others.
I think that Kohberger wanted to discuss his absence of emotion, and used visual perception as a spring-board. He's trying to be clever by camouflaging his sociopathic tendencies as a visual barrier.
"The man charged with the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students has spent much of his teen and adult life consumed by a rare neurological disorder known as visual snow syndrome.
...
Looking into the faces of family members was like “looking at a video game, but less.”
“As my family group hugs and celebrates, I am stuck in this void of nothing, feeling completely no emotion, feeling nothing,” the post said. “I feel dirty, like there is dirt inside of my head, my mind, I am always dizzy and confused. I feel no self worth.”
BBM points in your post
I feel that many people have a very over simplified, outdated, and dismissive attitude towards visual snow syndrome. And honestly, in many ways this is as harmful as the way people used to describe/view autism as all being one thing instead of a syndrome. It makes it harder for people to identify what is going on with themselves, ask for help, and get a correct diagnosis.
Believe me,
I believe 100% BK is guilty and entirely responsible for his actions. But I've always been interested in criminal psychology as well as the interplay between mental health and medical disorders.
And yes, I have stakes in the game--my 23 yo son has suffered from intense VSS since he was 17. I've been to all the specialists with him, devoured studies and medical articles about it, been through the whole 10 yrds. And since he has had OCD since he was a very young child and started experiencing severe depersonalization/derealization after his VSS started, I've had a front row seat to how these things can interact with each other and how it can affect a person and their family.
He doesn't follow the case on here, but he's read enough in the news and other sites, and is quite frankly frustrated with the amount of misinformation about VSS that is in the public thanks to this case.
I'm going to put some links here--these are the source for the facts I'm using to address particular points of your post (and other posts that have I've seen here. I'm limiting myself in how many sources I cite, because honestly after dealing with this for 6 yrs now I've got a ton of them.
rarediseases.org
With visual snow syndrome, you see static whether your eyes are open or shut. Learn more about what it's like looking through a shaken snow globe.
my.clevelandclinic.org
1)
Visual snow is not the same as ocular migraines or migraine auras. That is part of why it can be very difficult to diagnose. People with VSS do have an prevalence of migraines that is higher than that of the general population. However migraines are NOT the cause of the VSS, but they can worsen the VSS when migraines are present. Around 2015 is when researchers and experts really began to acknowledge VSS as an entirely separate syndrome.
"While in migraine, the hyperactivity of certain areas of the brain is transient; in the case of visual snow, this disorder is permanent."
Visual Snow Syndrome in Patient with Migraine: Case Report and Literature Review - PMC
2)
Visual snow syndrome can not be described as merely "fuzzy vision." Visual snow is present in the person's entire visual field and is characterized by uncountable tiny flickering dots laid over whatever the person is looking at. The static is usually B&W but can also be colored, flashing or transparent and can be seen no matter if your eyes are open or closed.
Additionally, up to 75% of people with VSS report having at least 3 out of 4 of these secondary visual problems:
- Seeing trailers after an item has already moved or gone (palinopsia)
- Sensitivity to light (photophobia)
- Night vision issues (nyctalopia) that can also include seeing vivid auras from lights at nighttime
- Visual perceptions that arise from inside the eye rather than the outside world such as seeing lights when your eyes are closed and you are in a dark room, floaters, etc.
for some really good visual depictions of what VSS and the secondary symptoms can look like:
3)
The description of seeing other people/the world as being like a video game as well as the flattening of emotional connections is depersonalization/derealization and can absolutely go hand in hand with severe VSS.
Derealization frequently co-occurs with depersonalization.
depersonalization: subjective feelings of detachment from the physical body and mental processes, and can involve a diminished sense of agency or feelings of being “robotic” ...feeling like an outside observer of their mind and body--a disconnect from oneself
derealization: the sense that the surrounding world is unreal or artificial--a disconnect from the external world and an inability to emotionally connect to people you love or see them as real
Objective: To characterise the psychiatric symptoms of visual snow syndrome (VSS), and determine their relationship to quality of life and severity of visual...
www.frontiersin.org
www.mayoclinic.org
lightly edited to compact info together:
"Depersonalisation scores showed the most consistent relationship with the number of visual symptoms and patient ratings of VS severity. Depersonalization scores were also found to contribute significantly to VS intensity and the number of symptoms experienced.
Nearly 45% of VSS patients in this study reported having experienced depersonalization, and over 25% showed scores above the scale cut-off indicating a possible depersonalization disorder. This suggests that depersonalization is not only common in VSS, but is severe in a significant number of patients. Derealization was also reported by ~30% patients.
High rates of depersonalization have been reported previously in patients with vestibular dysfunction retinal disease, and chronic dizziness. It has been theorised that feelings of depersonalisation may be evoked by a discrepancy between expected sensory input and actual aberrant sensory experience; or, alternatively, by a discrepancy between signals from different sensory systems due to one or more being disrupted."
And now some other things that often come up in discussions and
info on them can be found throughout all the links in the post:
4)
Severe anxiety or related disorders like OCD as well as depression are quite common in people who have more severe VSS. (see the frontiersin.org referenced above).
Some of this is chicken or egg: did you have anxiety or depression before VSS or did you develop them after your VSS started. With OCD, that would be something a person has before VSS...and it makes it much worse.
5)
Some people with VSS can drive, read, do things at night, etc because there is a such a spectrum of severity as well as the fact that some people find improvement of symptoms with different medications (sadly, not many though...medications don't have a great success rate in VSS), cognitive behavioral therapy or time. Anxiety, poor sleep, psych meds, can make it worse.
My son's would categorize his VSS after 6 years as not as severe--but mainly, he says, because he's learned to accept it and not fight it/let his OCD obsess about it. He prefers nighttime to day because of the sensitivity to light, and he actually doesn't have particularly diminished night vision. He doesn't drive (for other unrelated reasons), but says that the only time other cars' headlights and street lights bother him when he's in the car with us is when there is a lot of other cars and many closely spaced streetlights or when his VSS is aggravated by the factors mentioned in #5.
6)
Sleep difficulties are a frequent complaint among people with VSS. Patients often report difficulty sleeping due to the distraction of their visual symptoms in the dark, which are present with the eyes open or closed. The sleep issues can be increased time to fall asleep, lots of sleep disturbances, and poor sleep quality and efficiency.
So, I've read all the tapatalk posts once they were first uncovered and verified by NYT.
I'll say this--I believe those posts, and so do many parents I've talked to who also have kids with VSS. I had a hard enough time finding much detail information about VSS in 2019 when my son was diagnosed. There would have been
so much less info in 2009 when BK started posting about it in tapatalk. Let me reiterate from above:
Around 2015 is when researchers and experts began to fully and publicly acknowledge VSS as an entirely separate syndrome and that's when more information about the links between VSS and mental health conditions finally started appearing in more and more of the literature about it online. And in 2009, I can guarantee you that if BK just was looking up depersonalization/derealization online, articles on VSS were not going to just be popping up in relation to it.
When I read those posts (the actual ones on tapatalk, not just a summary in a news article), so many things jumped out at me that are things I mentioned above as well as other things I didn't go into detail about:
--co-morbid tinnitus (discussed in several of the previous links)
--dp/dr
--worsening after high levels of caffeine, hours of staring at a screen
--multiple sleep issues
--co-morbid migraines (which research now shows is not a cause of VSS but a co-occurence.
--light sensitivity
--afterimages
--seeing weird things in his peripheral vision like flickering lights
--memory issues/brain fog
--saw an optometrist, ophthalmologist, neuro-opthalmologist, therapist...tried different meds, had an MRI
--closed eye visuals
and so on
I believe BK had mental health issues such as OCD before the VSS. And that years of VSS and DPDR had a huge impact on him. Does it explain or excuse his horrible crimes? Absolutely NO.
But it does give insight.