The undertitle of this book is "An exploration of concious and unconscious vision". This book relates some truly amazing facts about consciousness and vision.
The first chapter relates to a patient of the authors: Dee Fletcher. This woman had an accident. She got poisoned by carbon monoxide while taking a shower. As a result, she suffered some brain damage and lost part of her vision. Dee can still see colours but she cannot recognize her mother. She can see the texture of things but not their overal shape. She can see the hairs on a hand's skin but she cannot recognize a hand. She has vision...without shape. she can tell that something is made of red plastic or shiny metal but she has no idea of the shape of the object. Dee has difficulty to separate an object from its background;
The authors tested Dee scientifically, asking her to perform various controled tasks.
When presented with a line pattern, she could say that they were lines but could not say if they were horizontal or vertical.
When presented with a drawing of an apple, she could not recopy it; but when asked to draw an apple from memory, she did very well.
The rest of her mental live seems to be perfectly normal.
All this seems weird but the result of further tests is even much weirder! (To be continued)
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