Causes of Charles Bonnet Syndrome

The main cause of CBS is loss of vision and how your brain reacts to this loss.

Exactly how sight loss leads to hallucinations isn't really known, but research is slowly revealing more about how the eye and the brain work together.

Current research seems to suggest that when you are seeing real things around you, the information received from your eyes actually stops the brain from creating its own pictures.

When you lose your sight, however, your brain is not receiving as much information from your eyes as it used to. Your brain can sometimes fill in these gaps by releasing new fantasy pictures, patterns or old pictures that it has stored. When this occurs, you experience these images stored in your brain as hallucinations.

CBS tends to begin in the weeks and months following a deterioration in your sight.