para-optic perception

   Also known as paroptic sight, *eyeless vision, eyeless sight, finger vision, dermo-optics, dermo-optical perception, dermal vision, skin reading, skin vision, cutaneous perception, digital sight, and bio-introscopy. The term para-optic perception is indebted to the Greek words para (beside, near, resembling, accessory to, beyond, apart from, abnormal) and opsis (seeing). The term perception paraoptique was introduced in or shortly before 1920 by the French author Louis Farigoule (1885-1972), better known under the pen name Jules Romains, to denote the capacity to perceive colours and formed images through the skin, especially upon touching with the fingertips. Instances of para-optic perception have been reported since the era ofmesmerism. During the 1960s, this allegedly paranormal phenomenon became an object of study in the Soviet Union and several other countries. In biomedicine, paraoptic perception is either associated with hysteria or identified as a type of * synaesthesia. In either case, the visual percepts in question are interpreted as * visual hallucinations that arise simultaneously with - or in close succession to - a tactile stimulus.

   References

   Farigoule, L. (1920). La vision extra-rétinienne et le sens paroptique. Recherches de psychophysiologie expérimentale et de physiologie his-tologique. Paris: Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française.

   Guily, R.E. (1991). Harper's encyclopedia of mystical and paranormal experience .New York, NY: Castle Books.