When the occipital cortex of the brain, located posteriorly in the skull, is damaged, the brain’s ability to perceive and respond to visual stimuli is inevitably affected. Impairment of this primary visual cortex, also called the striate cortex, may leave and individual completely blind regardless of the health of the eyes themselves. However, there is a remarkable phenomenon in which blind people are able to continue to perceive visual stimuli without being aware that they are doing so. This phenomenon is called blindsight, and it is defined as the ability to respond to objects and images without consciously perceiving the visual stimuli. One experiment involving blindsight documents the ability of a blind man to successfully navigate through a hallway littered with obstacles without consciously …show more content…
I think that the most striking facet of blindsight is the unconscious component. It’s remarkable that an individual can lose their ability of conscious vision, and that the brain is capable of responding by taking over in an “autopilot”-type mode to perceive stimuli using several independent pathways. The information provided in this article makes me wonder whether or not blindsight has some sort of survival purpose in human evolution. Just as the individual in the article was described as being able to move down the crowded hallway without tripping or hurting himself on obstacles in his way, I think that blindsight may have served a similar purpose in our ancient ancestors. A person who can even unconsciously perceive obstacles has a better chance at survival that a person who cannot. My hope is that as blindsight continues to be researched, we gain a better understanding of those specific independent pathways that may be involved and that research conclusion might be useful in treating or rehabilitating individuals with cortical
Some patients with damage to their primary visual cortex, causing blind areas, are able to sense something that has been placed in their blind areas without actually seeing an item in front of them. The ability to sense what is in front of someone without that person having the experience of having something in front of them is what Block explains to be superblindsight. So, according to Block, one does not have to be prompted about something being in their blind area, they just know based on their senses. Superblindsight is having the ability to have A-consciousness, but not P-consciousness. Superblindsighters are functional in the way that they can tell when something is in front of them, but they just don’t experience what is in front of
Some might refer to "seeing" as simply to watch with a naked eye, while some would refer to it as being able to witness an event and recall upon it later. In fact, some would even go as far as that if someone hasn't witnessed something visually, he basically hasn't "seen" it. However, in his essay "The Mind's eye," Oliver Sacks seemingly breaks the norm. In his essay, the blind's adaptation to their disadvantaged is talked about. Yet, it seems like those who were victims of the neurological disorder seem better off blind. Furthermore, another question hanging in the balance is whether the blind people are actually "adapting" to their new lives or rather "reforming" how they will live? Through various stories of blind people, he is able to
During my childhood I was diagnosed as having poor eyesight and was prescribed glasses to assist with my vision correction. I realize how blessed I am to have had that as an option. I was always in awe of the environment and creatures who inhabited the various areas of nature. The sense of vision is very important and without the ability to see an individual would be missing out on many colorful life experiences. Blindness, which is the lack of the ability to see is a very dark and challenging disability. Without one’s eyes, everyday activities such a walking, reading, eating and identifying people can be a struggle. It has been proven that the brain will adapt to the loss by giving itself a makeover. If one sense is lost,
prove to be blind when it comes to the world they are in. By looking
Processing capacity is a very broad and flexible category according to many researchers. In fact, the quote above mentioned suggests that we often fail to notice things that happen just in front of us (unexpected events that are often salient) either because we were completely absorbed by something else or because we had so many things to do at the same time that we couldn’t pay attention to it. We have all at least once failed to see a friend who was waving at us while eating in the cafeteria or walking in a crowded street. The primary question that we should ask ourselves is: how many things can we attend at the same time? The truth is that we didn’t perceive this friend because of a phenomenon called “inattentional blindness”. The problem is that the richness of our visual experience leads us to believe that our visual representation will include and preserve the same amount of detail (Levin et al 2000). In this paper we’ll see the different theories of inattentional blindness, and the classical theories demonstrating this paradigm.
The eye is an extremely diverse organ, ranging in complexity across and within animal phyla. Here, a comparative approach is taken to outlining the diversity of the eye forms within vertebrates and invertebrates. The eye morphology of a variety of organisms was examined. Eye function, and placement on the body was also considered. Here, variation in eye form is discussed in relation to the environment the organism is adapted to. It is shown that an organisms eye morphology functions optimally for the ecological niche it occupies. Evolutionary analysis is used to account for the emergence of the different eyes. Convergent evolution is used to justify the similarities in eye types seen in organisms of different species. This analysis begins with the simplest of eye forms composes of single cells, present in the zooplankton larvae. Such primitive forms are identified in mollucs, annelids, cnidarians, and are then compared to more advanced eye forms contain lenses. This comparative approach provides a breadth of examples of vertebrates and invertebrates, making visible, the diversity of eye morphology within the animal kingdom.
...en information. With the use of echolocation, whales and dolphins can communicate between individuals, hunt, navigate, and visualize their surroundings even though they can’t always see it. An organisms ability to adapt and survive and environment is known as fitness, and has been perfected by whales in such a way that they haven’t significantly evolved for about 33 million years. Scientists have been using this extraordinary sense of communication, and depiction to identify in humans, specifically blind humans, the ability to use this advanced method of environmental depiction, and how they have used it to not only see their surroundings, detect movements in surroundings, and use this skill not only to navigate by walking, but even use this to depict what their entire environment looks like, what it contains, and what materials are present in the environment.
Before I read Oliver Sacks' article dealing with Virgil's sight recovery, I tried to guess what would happen if an adult who has been blind for a lifetime had recovered his vision. On this paper, I will confront my hunches about what really happened in the article. When I started thinking about what could happen to someone facing a real change like recovering his sight, in the first place I tried to imagine what it could be like to be blind, and what are the consequences of blindness on the person. I understood that blindness wasn't a bad thing or a disease. In fact, blind people are not living in a poorer condition than blind people.
Neurological Institute / McGill University. (2004, July 23). The Blind Really Do Hear Better. ScienceDaily. Retrieved from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/07/040723093712.htm
The “Paradise of the Blind” and “Black Boy,” while set almost 50 years apart and halfway across the world, exemplify the universality of certain stories through writing. They demonstrate how people worldwide have similar experiences. “Paradise of the Blind” is set in post-war Vietnam and was written by Duong Thu Huong, a Vietnamese woman who crafted a pseudo-autobiography based on her own experiences. The narrative follows the fictional character, Hang. The novel “Paradise of The Blind” is banned in Vietnam due to its anti-communist messaging.
What "Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground” means to me:
The art of storytelling has been around since the beginning of time. Stories keep people entertained and teach life lessons. Tales have been recorded in books and movies for centuries. The plot line is incredibly important to keep the audience captivated. However, an easily overlooked importance is the author’s literary choices, or how the story is told. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr crafts a beautiful tale of how a blind French girl and an orphan boy in the Third Reich collide in the heat of World War II. What makes this story amazing is the literary devices Doerr uses to keep the reader entertained. Anthony Doerr keeps the chapters short, uses switches between points of view, and uses flashbacks to create a novel that is hard
For our assignment, I chose to be blind. This was a tough assignment, however a very humbling one. First, while I thought this chose was the easiest of the three, after just ten minutes I felt lost and helpless. My thoughts went to how I was going to complete anything for myself. So I tried to get up and move to the kitchen to get a drink of water and needless to say I ran into many objects that I thought I knew where they were located, however my senses were off by just the simple thing of being blindfolded.
Blindness can be so much more than the state of being unable to see (Dictionary.com). Both the 2008 movie Blindness, directed by Fernando Meirelles and based on a novel by José Saramago, and the short story The Country of the Blind written by H. G. Wells in 1904, put blindness at the center of the plot. What can blindness mean in our society? And what can blindness mean regarding my future profession in design? In the movie Blindness, to be blind leads to losing all that’s civilized; in H. G. Wells’ The Country of the Blind, blindness can be interpreted as a symbol for ignorance; finally, in graphic design, blindness could be to only focus on the aesthetic part of designing and forgetting the practical aspect of the design.
The most common vision issues are the refractive errors, more commonly referred to as nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism and presbyopia. Refractive errors occur when the shape of the eye prevents light from focusing directly on the retina. The length of the eyeball (either longer or shorter), changes in the shape of the cornea, or aging of the lens can cause refractive errors. Most people have one or more of these conditions. In these situations of refraction, the cornea and the lens bend (refract) incoming light rays so they focus precisely on the retina at the back of the eye (figure 2). Refraction is the bending of light as it passes through one object to another. Vision occurs when light rays are bent (refracted) as they pass through the cornea and the lens. The light is then focused on the retina, and then the retina converts the light-rays into messages that are sent through the optic nerve to the brain. The brain after that interpret these messages into the images we see.