Reading Activity Week #4 (Due Tuesday)

I just wanted to say that I really like these readings, and I would much rather read something like this than stare at a textbook and fall asleep half-way through. I think that the book really applies and coincides with subjects in the text, even though there is not a definite streamlined connection.

Given that, I found a great deal of information on visual processing the text. Virgil's idea of sight was one that was almost undescribable. I know I wrote about the feature integration theory in another post, but I feel like this is really relevant here. FIT states that an automatic preattentive processing of features happens first and is followed by a controlled attentional processing to bind the features together. In the reading Virgil was said to have seen the different parts of his cat (his paws, tail, nose, ect.) but he could not put them together as a whole. He could not construct what is called a binding problem, where different aspects of what is seen go to different parts of the brain but are then integrated as one object. His brain may not have learned to do this process, thus leaving him with random parts of a whole that he could not distinguish.

Another interesting part of the text was the idea that he was experiencing blindsight. I had heard of this before, and like written in the textbook I thought it had to do with lesions in the brain (particularily the occipital lobe), but there was no real mention of this is the reading. Blindsight is vision without the awareness of patient to this sight. This was what he was experiencing, he could see a banana and grasp it but had no idea it was there in his visual field.

Another term I wanted to bring up was parrern recognition. This is the step between the perception of a stimulus in an environment and its categorization as a meaningful object. When you look at an object from a difficult angle you can usually still realize that it is the same object, just from a different point of view, Virgil could not do this. When he would see his dog run around the lawn he sometimes wondered if it was indeed the same dog because the visual information he was recieving was so different from one second to the next. This also deals with the idea of agnosia. In agnosia people can see objects, but not register them as important or recognizable. Virgil did not react much to facial expressions and sometimes had a hard time recognizing people when they changed their expressions. The text and the chapter both mention the man who mistook his wife for a hat and his struggles with agnosia.

One thing that Virgil really enjoyed was movement. He enjoyed watching cars from his window as they would drive past. He could watch television with sound and describe things that were happening because of the movements he happened to see and the sound to go with it, but was completely lost with just still pictures. A receptive field will change depending on what the viewer will percieve as relevant. He could focus on things that were moving because it was relevant to his initial focus, but had a hard time with photos because there was nothing to signal attentional function to his brian.

A lot of what I connected to the book were things that I will really remember. I was really striked by the idea presented in the beginning of the chapter... the question posed that if someone who has not seen a triangle or a circle, but has felt it.. will he be able to identify the objects based on sight. A touch triangle might not be the same as a sight triangle. I discussed this with my boyfriend as he seemed unable to grasp the concept, but with good reason. We are sighted people and sight happens without much thought. We know what a triangle looks like and it makes sense to us what it is because we can say we know what a pointed edge looks like, along with what it should feel like.

Touch alone cannot explain exactly what an object will look like. Take for example those boxes you put your hand in and try to guess the object, it is not as always as easy as it seems, and we have seen most of these objects before. You also cannot concieve the color by touch and color is meaningless to a blind person. Try to describe blue, and you can't. You can describe things that are blue, but blue is meaningless and is forever descriptionless without a visual interpretation of it. People who have been blind throughout their lives do tend to enjoy color because it is something they could not concieve as a blind person.

I really enjoyed this chapter, and it was probably my favorite. One thing that I have realized about the way that oliver sacks writes is the way he tries to make a connection with the person in the chapter. You get a feel for the person, not just the disease or whatever the person may be dealing with. There wasn't much to say about dislike in the chapter, except for things that just cannot be changed. In the end Virgil got really sick and was glad to be blind again... something that people with normal sight cannot understand. We cannot understand giving sight up, and it can bother us because we know how much a benefit it is to our lives. I have seen a movie based on cochlear implants, and these parents wanted their child to have one, but the rest of the family was death and they thought it was absurd. Being deaf was what they know and they didn't see it as a handicap. Virgil understood being blind way more in comparison to what he learned as a sighted person. I wish he could have been more accepting of his sight, but I understood it was a cognitive struggle and probably contributed to his illness.

I think about vision a little differently now, because this chapter has given me a totally different perspective. I have never read anything about a person recieving their vision after a lifetime of not having vision at all, and this has been eye-opening for me. Vision happens so easily that we don't really tend to it, but it is something that happens in the brain. Our visual processes are learned throughout our lifetime, and our brain does interpret and learn from our vision. When we see a shadow, we don't try to jump over it because we understand that it is just the blocking of light by an object. Without this learning in place we would be lost in a world of stimulations we could not understand. This is like the other chapters in-so-far that they all deal with the brain, there is no escaping it.

terms: binding problem, feature integration theory, blidnsight, agnosia, occipital lobe, attentional function, receptive field, visual processing

This case was extremely interesting, but I was very disappointed by it's topic. The title "To see and not see" suggests blindsight so I was preparing myself for it, but Sacks only mentions blindsight in passing. I suppose blindsight is too common for such exact attention from Oliver Sacks.

Virgil is facinating nonetheless, however, I really wish I had never read about him. There are so many complications surrounding him. He had an early experience with a variety of severe illnesses. His mother claims he changed significantly following his first coma. There is a personality change involved; he has become more passive. This could mean a variety of different things. Certainly there is brain damage involved. It is my first impulse to guess that his prefrontal cortex is especially effected. But, it is possible that different areas of his temporal lobe, limbic system and other areas involved with motivation and personality were damaged.

It is even possible that it was not a personality change but just a change in behavior. Really, knocking out a child's visual cortex is going to change how the child is going to act. Suddenly not being able to see would subdue anyone. But the nature of the brain damage will always be a mystery, which is why I wish I had never read about it. Even if his brain is opened up after his death, it is impossible to know which coma caused which damage and how much of it is bad genes or severe illness. Then again, he was small enough when he maintained his first damage that his brain was plastic enough to recover some of the areas. It is frustrating!

But of more immediate interest is Virgil's capacity to see. I expected that he would have relatively good eye sight because Virgil had gotten past his critical period as a sighted person. So I expected that he would recover much of his sight. He did not so that troubles me.

He was certainly missing the gestalt. He was unable to put individual pieces of visual stimuli together. For example, when he saw his cat, he saw the individual parts but could not understand that they formed a whole: the cat. This intrigues me very much. Children have trouble with the gestalt too, perhaps not as severely as Virgil does, but they still do. If you present a picture of fruits forming a face to children, they will not see the face. They will see some fruits compiled together. But it is the same thing. The ability to put together fruits and see a face and the ability to put together cat parts and see a cat both involve the gestalt. Honestly, Virgil was very small when he received blind education so the fact that he is unable to do something that most kids are unable to do makes sense to me. Of course, a kid has an easier time than Virgil but that is besides the point.

In Virgil's case we have little support for the feature analysis theory of perception. Definitely, Virgil is not able to see the whole but sees in parts. But he does not break down stimuli too much. At first, he does say he saw a complete mess of light and color at the time of the first opening of his eyes. However, he was able to put these things together. When they went to the zoo, he thought the gorilla looked like a human being. He was not having trouble discerning each line on the gorilla's body. Even when he was looking at his cat, he knew what a paw was and what a tail was. He just did not realize they came together to make a cat. Plus, when he was looking at letters he confused H with A. If he was looking at each individual angle, he would not have made that mistake. It could be bad eye sight, of course.

So most probably there is prototype recognition going on. He is forming ideas of what something should look like and then he matches what something should be with what he is seeing in the present. But it can easily be argued that if he was able to make a prototype for a paw or a tail, why couldn't he make a prototype for a cat? I have no idea. Maybe it involves more practice that he never got. Somehow, maybe cat recognition is a more cognitively involved process than paw recognition. Following that, why couldn't it be template matching? What makes it prototype recognition and not template matching? Well, I can only fumble for an answer. The way I understand template matching is that there is a mental idea of what something looks like and what you see visually has to match that almost perfectly. But with prototype recognition, only resemblance is necessary. I observed that Virgil could classify dog paws as paws. I find dog paws very different from cat paws so I would guess that there is a prototype involved here rather than a template.

This is very fascinating stuff. With this case, everything known about seeing is pushed to the limit. Basically, in the more physiological aspect of things, is he seeing like we are? I would say no. What I mean by that is, our neuron that goes off when we see something is radically different than his neuron. The brain is plastic and it likes to use itself as optimally practically as it possibly can. Virgil has not been seeing for forty years. His brain probably used that area. The brain would not be passive to about a third of it remaining unused. So he has cortical area that has been used for something else for forty years. Now suddenly, he needs that area to revert back to its original function. That neuron that changed its functioning once is not going to perfectly do what it was meant to do.

terms: prototype matching, template matching, gestalt, corteces, critical period

Reading Assignment – Week #4
To See and Not See
While reading about Virgil’s rare condition it seems obvious to look into the process of the retina to make sense of what Virgil was experiencing.

The visual system is a complex organism that is made up of many different areas. A major part of this is the retina. There are three major things that happen when we see something visually. One, there is reception, which is when we absorb the physical energy. Next, transduction occurs, in which that energy is changed into a pattern in the neurons. Finally, there is coding, which is a direct correspondence between the physical stimulus and nervous system activity. The light waves from objects that we see in our environments pass through the cornea at the front of the eye and proceed to the iris. Behind the cornea is where we process and see color. The amount of light drawn in the eye is determined by the pupil, which is an opening to the iris. The lens focuses light onto the retina in the back of the eye. Each lens then adjusts the shape by bringing the images into focus on the retina.

Overall, I really enjoyed this chapter. Hearing Virgil’s story was amazing and every interesting. It’s fascinating to hear such a bizarre case and see how he has progressed through it all and now seeing what his vision is like. Some things that really stuck out to me in this chapter were parts of Virgil’s story that were very interesting to me personally. One thing that was crazy to hear was after his surgery it was like a newborn baby trying to understand the visual world. His visual processing was at a starting point and he had to program the things he saw into his understanding. It was interesting to hear some of his experiences. An example of this was when Virgil mentioned that his brain had to work faster to understand everything he was seeing. Another interesting point was that Virgil only pointed out things when he had to. The author of the book was seeing Virgil after his surgery and was curious as to what he saw. He asked him what kind of cars he saw and Virgil started going on about the colors and shapes of the vehicles. But prior to his asking, Virgil didn’t pay much attention to them. Finally, it was interesting to hear the experiences that through Virgil off. One particular example was that birds kind of frightened him. Virgil didn’t have any experience with depth or distance or anything so when a bird flew by it startled him and he ducked, unsure if the bird was close enough to hit him, when in fact they weren’t even close. Another example of this was his shadow, he didn’t understand it. He tried to walk over it, stop, and basically just try to understand it and its meaning. Virgil didn’t like cluttered areas such as the supermarket because there was too much going on for him to focus and he mentioned he didn’t like it. Virgil preferred places that were “uncluttered” such as grass or green hills. Something he could focus his eyes upon and understand.

After reading this fascinating story I know realize that a surgical procedure such as the one that Virgil underwent can be life changing. The book made it very clear that everyone believes that gaining vision is something that people think just happens instantly. A person takes the band aides off and all the sudden they understand everything in the world around them. After this reading, I realize that your eyes don’t have the experiences that your body has, so therefore you have to practically teach your eyes and mind to think together and understand the things that you are in fact able to see for the first time. I couldn’t imagine. It takes real patience and dedication to self teach yourself something that you have lived your entire life without.

After looking in the textbook I decided to focus on some of the different theoretical ideas about how we use our vision, some of them were mentioned in the chapter. The Gestalt Theory focuses mainly on the fact that recognition is based on seeing a whole figure at a time. In the book Virgil had trouble doing this. An example is when he would focus on several different parts of his cat (ears, tail, paws, etc.), but was unable to recognize the whole figure as a cat. Another form that was talked about in the textbook as well as in Virgil's case was Bottom-Up and Top-Down processing. This is where we start at the top and then follow it down and that allows us to recognize the object as a whole (or vice versa from the bottom to the top. The example in Virgil's case was the fact that he could not recognize a tree for a long time. He would look at the trunk, then the branches, and then the leaves and did not realize how the leaves could just be floating in air. Once he finally made the connection he was able to recognize the tree as a whole unit. The main thing that was able to work for Virgil was that if he had a smaller object of the animal or building he could touch and feel it and then recognize and understand the sight of it from there.

Another thing that the text did talk about that is important in this particular chapter is the retina. This is what Virgil's underlying disease was. The retina is the light-sensing membrane at the back of the eye. Retinitis pigmentosa is the eye disease that Virgil had in the book, where there is damage to the retina and it progressively gets worse over time. There is not supposed to be an actual treatment for this (except the cataracts where the "cause" for Virgil's complete blindness in this case). Things that would help were wearing sunglasses to help preserve the retina from any further damage to the UV light.

Personally, I did not like this chapter as well as the others. This chapter did seem to drag on for me and it really was not as interesting as the others were. Virgil himself was interesting and he had so much going on in his life that I personally started to think stress did not help his case. The fact that he was sick as a child and had eye problems is depressing (especially to lose your eyesight as young as six). I feel as though Virgil did greatly adapt to his impairment and could lead a fairly normal life. I think it is a good thing that Amy did eventually came around because it almost seemed that Virgil's contacts were becoming cut-off as he started to just listen to the radio more and more.

The first thing that I will remember from the chapter is the fact that Virgil was so confused and dumbfounded by regaining his sight. I never really thought about anyone gaining their sight back after several years, but I definitely did not imagine it to be as hard as it was described in Virgil's case. Throughout the chapter you could really tell how difficult it was for Virgil to grasp the whole idea of eyesight again and to basically relearn concepts and ideas about eyesight. One of the major ideas I liked from the chapter was the fact that when Virgil regained his sight there was no over emotion, and then he heard a voice, and realized what it was coming from must be a face. If he had not known that voices came from faces he may have been even more confused about the whole eyesight process.

The next thing I will remember from the chapter is how Virgil constantly confused his dog and cat because they were both black and white. He would constantly analyze the different parts of the cat or dog (ears, paws, tail, etc.) but he could not put the animal all together until he touched it. As soon as he touched it he knew exactly which one it was.

Finally, the last thing I will remember is the fact that Virgil had little models of toy soldiers, buildings, and shapes and would analyze them frequently, touch them, get a feel for what they are. This would then allow him to recognize things in a larger scale and understand what they were. I found all of these things intriguing because this is something I will never be able to grasp or to fully understand. It is very interesting and just a very tactile way of learning.

One of the things that I really liked from the chapter were Amy's journals. She was able to talk about what was going on with Virgil, how he was acting leading up to the wedding, and when he had relapses. I liked this because it gave a greater perspective of what was going on in their lives and if stress or anything else was affecting Virgil psychologically. This could affect his vision and was interesting to learn about. For example when his family came to the wedding they refused to believe that he could see and this in turn caused Virgil to be more dependent on his family and his vision declined. He seemed to have a psychological block that he could actually see.

One thing I really disliked about the chapter (because it was hard to hear or accept) was the fact that Virgil was psychologically afraid to someday be forced to cross the street by himself or drive a car. Although I know that gaining his vision back was very hard and stressful it seems weird to me for Virgil to not want to be more dependent. I felt as though his new found sight caused him more stress and worry than if he would have just been blind the whole time. His further stress caused him to eat more, which in turn helped to lead to his obesity. I also feel like Virgil did not really care for his sight back in the first place and it did feel as though Amy really pushed him outside of his comfort zone.

The chapter made me thing about other brain issues such as Anton's syndrome, psychological blocks and phobias, brain adapting to a person's condition, brain responding to overstimulation, and meningitis. These were issues that were all brought up in the chapter and caused me to look into things I did not know very well like Anton's syndrome (a disorder marked by psychological denial and rationalization of clinically evident loss of vision) and meningitis (inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord).

This chapter relates to the others through adaptation of the brain's imperfections. All of these stories have shown how a person with a disease is able to overcome it and lead their normal life. The brain in this specific case really allowed Virgil to be able to recognize things through touch and tactile information. In this case it is likely that there was an increase in tactile parts in the cerebral cortex (main role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness) which may have even extended into the visual cortex.

Terms: Gestalt Theory, Bottom-Up and Top-Down, retina, Retinitis pigmentosa, Anton's syndrome, meningitis

The case of the formerly blind man known only to us as Virgil yields significant insight into how our brain perceives our environment and minimizing the energy it takes to perceive by cutting down on the actual amount of information processed. Virgil lived most of his life without sight, and managed because he was using some of the typical tools developed for the blind. He used a cane to feel out his path to walk and he used Braile to read. When his sight was returned following the operation, his brain did not need another sense and he did not experience sight as people who are sighted their entire lives do. His brain began to use sight as a tool, just like all the techniques he was taught to use in lieu of sight. He had trouble adjusting to his new sense because he had no, or at least very limited, cognitive structures to draw upon to form what the book calls an "unconscious inference." Basically the information being received by the optic nerve had no established neural path to follow to be processed. Similarly an infant can't use it's sight to the optimum ability because it has not yet developed the cognitive structures needed to process the information received from the eyes in the context of memory, behavioral tendencies and instinct.

I was interested in how well Virgil was able to recognize letters in his formal vision tests, yet was unable to comprehend written language. He had been working with language in the form of Braile as well as raised lettering, but obviously had virtually no vision of the letters yet he was able to pick up pretty quickly on recognizing the letters. But when faced with whole words or strings of letters he was just as confounded as you or me trying to decipher Chinese. Similarly he was able to recognize visual representations of basic shapes, but he had trouble distinguishing between his cat and dog until he felt them. It would seem that Virgil was better able to connect the visual aspect of something to the other aspects when he had previous experience with the object in some way. Virgil knew by experience that triangles have three sides and the letter E is three parallel lines and one perpendicular line but the ear of a cat or the beginning of a word isn't something that can easily be described especially when your only reference is how it feels under the finger. Virgil had created schemas for each of the objects that consisted of his tactile experience. Because he had been deprived of sight Virgil did not posses what Gestaltists calls "canonic perspectives," essentially visual flashcards. They are the first image that pops in your head when someone names an object or person, and Virgil had to create these. We have been creating these mental flashcards out of the womb and are good at it, but Virgil, like a 40 year old man picking up a new instrument, was struggling. (This idea is similar to that of constructing prototypes which we reference for comparison when recognizing patterns.)

Two very popular theories of information processing are bottom-up and top-down and our book presents them as happening at the same time with all of our perceptions. My understanding of this processing model portrays the brain as using top-down, or whole-to-part as the book articulates, on a general more unconscious basis. This is heavily influenced by what Biederman called "context effect," basically the way in which our schema of a location or situation affects our immediate perceptions. When we are at work we know what we should see while we are on the job. We see familiar tools and faces, we sum up all of our experience when asked what we are doing by simply saying "I am at work." Bottom-up or part to whole processing occurs when we consciously analyze information around us. For example we walk into a familiar room, see familiar people and are able to say we are in our own home, but if we are asked where exactly the remote control is, or what exactly was on the counter then we must actively seek information, and we seek detail. We build an answer to the question based on details within the context of being in our home.

In the case of Virgil, he had to develop sight as a whole new tool to experience his environment. In all likelihood Virgil's brain allowed areas that would normally be responsible for many visual processes to be used by other senses. Because he did not have the cognitive structures established in his brain throughout life, Virgil was not able to process in a top-down fashion so he did not have a visual schema set up for his home, office etc... He had to rely on his conscious attention to detail, bottom-up processing, to be able to experience new visual wonders in a way that he could connect to. I also find his appreciation of color interesting. He obviously has not experienced color before and there is no way to describe color very well with words. To him every shade of red or yellow is a new color, most people have to pay for an experience like that.

There were several issues brought up in my text book that were relevant to Virgil’s case. Virgil had been blind for nearly fifty years when he had this surgery. He was basically raised and lived his life being a blind person. When Virgil was a young boy he became and ill and ended up in a coma. When he regained his health he lived the rest of his life as a blind man. During childhood our brains are still plastic and I would assume that Virgil’s was too. I think that after he lost his sight the areas of his brain that are normally used in seeing started helping his other senses - to compensate for his loss of sight.

In his mid-forties Virgil had surgery to removed the cataracts from one then both of his eyes. After his bandages were removed it was nothing like the miracle that Jesus performed. There was no gasping crowd or a proclamation of sight. Instead Virgil was confused at what he was seeing. It was only after one of the blurry figures spoke that he recognized it as his doctor. I found this so odd. How could you not know it was your fiancé that was standing with you in that room? Later in the book Sacks talks about how sighted people open their eyes with intact memories of images that they have built their world with. Images from the things around them that they have seen every day. Virgil had not seen anything since he was a young boy. He did not have these memories to pull from - his brain had no practice in receiving information from his eyes. Virgil’s brain did not function with conceptually driven processes. That is when the viewer does not need to collect data about everything in the environment. We have memories that will tell us what information is important. Virgil’s eyesight was still not great and he did not have the brain function to look for eyes, nose and mouth in order to recognize his doctor or wife-to-be.

Instead Virgil had bits and pieces of data driven processes. This is when we analyze the edges, lines, areas of light and dark, color, sounds and physical features of an object in order to recognize it. From the descriptions that Sacks gave Virgil saw blurry outlines (areas of light and dark, with some edges) and he recognized voices.

Later we learned about Virgil’s many issues with trying to learn how to see. Sacks talks about the difference between sight person’s world and the blind person’s world. Sighted people are in a world of space. We can see where things come and go. A blind person lives in a world of time. They see when things come and go. One of the most exciting experiences for Virgil was that he could see color. Color does not mean much in a world of touch.

One very interesting thing that I read was the Virgil did not recognize objects just after looking at them. He would ask to touch something - then he would recognize what it was. It did not occur to me that without practice/ or having done it before one would not be able to transfer that kind of information. My text book had many things to say about these kinds of processes.
My book mentioned the terms pattern recognition and agnosia. Patten recognition is a step in information processing where environmental stimuli is turned into a meaningful object. This is one of the many things that Virgil would have needed to learn to use his sight / had he kept his sight. Other wise everything in Virgil’s world would have been/stayed blurred areas of color. Agnosia is when objects can be recognized in terms of its properties but not as a meaningful object. An example that Sacks describes is when Virgil is holding his cat. He is feeling and looking in order to learn what it is. Virgil could see the nose, tail, ears of the cat but the object as a whole. This is also known as analytic processing - when one perceives the features that make up a whole. In Virgil’s case he could not put the objects/features together; in other words, he was unable to do holistic processing.

My textbook is mentions a module - a set of processes that are automatic, fast, apart from other cognitive systems and, in a localized area of the brain. That made me wonder if sight is a module for those of us who have had it our whole lives? We do see things and those processes seem to happen instantly and, we have certain parts of our brain that are dedicated to seeing. Then I started thinking about Virgil and how his brain took in visual information. It was automatic to see things but, those things had no meaning. He needed to work with his visual system to make objects (whole objects with meaning) out of those blurry colors. If sighted people do use modules then Virgil’s brain would need some plasticity in order to dedicate areas of his brain to visual input.

At the end of the chapter Virgil basically loses his sight entirely. Except for random visual impulses where he can see what is around him - and with more acuity than he had previously had. There were other times in the hospital when Virgil would claim to be entirely blind but react to certain visual stimuli in his environment. This suggests that Virgil had blindsight this is when he is not consciously aware that there is visual input - it is vision without awareness.

I thought this chapter was pretty interesting. It was not as good as some previous ones that we have read but, I did like the ‘twist’ ending. Three things that I will remember about this chapter are the following; one, I will remember that these types of surgeries (cataracts being removed) has been taking place for about three centuries. Two, I will remember that when an adult regains their vision is not like it was has completely restored. All that time that they have not have visual input will have repercussions on their new sight. They will have rededicated parts of their brain to other senses and their comprehension and understanding of a visual world (versus a time based world) will have diminished. Third and lastly, I will remember that we are not always aware of what visual information we are seeing. Blindsight is a very interesting concept to me. It makes me wonder, like Sacks, how much of Virgil’s (and others) blindness was physiological and how much psychological?

One thing I really liked was stories about past patients from the 1700’s that had been experiencing the same things that Virgil was going through. One thing that I did not like about the reading was the description of Virgil’s drive and ambition. The text made him sound like a fairly lazy person (he had changed after his illness has a young child). Maybe if Virgil had tried harder he would have had less stress (he could have said no the whole thing) then he would not have had anxiety or stress - the stress that may have lead him to gain more weight that eventually lead to his later health issues that caused his sight to again recede and for his repertory issues.

I did not know or think about the fact that the brain of an adult will have a much harder time learning how to see then a person who is younger or had lost their vision for a short time. Their inability to understand a world with space and dimension is interesting and scary to me. What kind of world were they living in? I would be terrified to lose those understandings. This chapter again relates to many things we have discussed with brain plasticity and personal identity. Virgil and many of the past cases have resented their sight. It was more difficult to use than their other means/senses. Their sight was not trustworthy. They had understanding, prestige, and confidence as their blind self. Then they had to relearn even . the simplest tasks. Overall, this chapter was a bit more depressing than others but still a good read.

Terms: Blindsight, Pattern recognition, Agnosia, Conceptually driven processes, Data-driven processes, Holistic Processing, Analytic Processing, Module

Another incredibly unusual story from this chapter. So much like all of the previous readings from this text, Virgil seems to have had a better life with his disability. This is such a profoundly difficult concept to understand for those of us whom have never had any extreme physical or psychological abnormalities.

The several different theoretical approaches to understanding pattern recognition from our textbook really helped me most to interpret Virgil's situation. Already with my undergraduate degree in psychology and in my second year towards a master's in counseling, I have studied a great deal about Gestalt Theory. I thought about the concept regarding all stimuli working together as whole to help form the entire object. Virgil had not had vision throughout his life and I felt like the rest of his executive functioning could not recognize or coordinate with his "new" vision. Prototype theory is also interesting in this case. While Virgil had been able to experience certain stimuli through touch, many different stimuli would not have had any prototype inside his brain and would therefore be virtually foriegn to him.

While this chapter was overall entertaining and informative like the previous stories we have read, there was one particular aspect that really stuck with me. Reading about Virgil's elementary-like assessments of certain stimuli ("that is a blue-car") made me think about my 3 year old son Peyton. When my son initially began speaking and started to recognize certain objects as they were stored in his long-term memory, he could only utter single worded statements like "car", "truck", or "ball". Virgil seemed, relatively, the same. I began to ponder whether his new visual functioning was only able to act as old as it was, so to speak. Therefore, while he himself was a grown man, his visual perceptions were still infantile.

From this chapter I will remember the definition and concept of agnosia, or the inability to recognize objects without memory loss. He was afraid at many times when prompted with too much stimuli. I'll also remember Virgil's reluctance regarding the decision to have the surgery. It almost seemed as if something inside was warning him of the difficulty it may present. The way the author described and related Virgil's examination of people and obkects to "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" helped me to better understand his actions as well. I was able to formulate a better picture as to how abnormal he may seem and will remember that forever.

I guess the one thing I liked the most from this chapter was learning about agnosia. The idea that the brain is able to lose the ability to recognize objects without memory loss is amazing. Another idea that really tells you how the brain is it's own universe.

Like all of the other chapters, this one seemed to run on with trivial, useless information. While I like to understand, in-depth, the entire story, there is too much filler in these chapters for me personally.

I was previously unaware that there was such a term for the concept of agnosia. I liken this to the ideas from Gestalt Theory and the entire mind and body working together to formulate the visual perception. Virgil's vision was a new addition that was unable to coordinate accurately with the rest of his brain.

Each story makes me try to think about other aspects of neuroscience and the brain in general that I may be unaware of. I learned a lot from my Biopsychology course as an undergrad, but there is always more!

Each story has related to the others by portraying a unique situation regarding someone with a disability. I always find it incredible that the individual with the disability seemed to function much better with the issue rather than becoming "normal".

Terms: Gestalt Theory, Agnosia, Prototype Theory, Neuroscience, Visual Perception.

After reading this chapter, To See or Not to See, and turning to our textbook I decided to read more about remembering. I decided this because on page 122 of The Anthropologist on Mars, I was humored and could relate (in some weird way anyway) when they were describing another patient and how they could not, by site, remember which was the cat and which was the dog and the patient observed the cat closely (after feeling it) and then said ‘So, puss, I shall know you another time’ only to forget again. So, I decided to learn more about remembering.

The textbook states that paying close attention increases the rate that memory goes into the sensory system and enters the short-term memory (STM). If you use maintenance rehearsal the information will keep circling around the STM but if you use elaborative rehearsal the information could travel to the LTM (long-term memory).

The textbook also explained different techniques to enhance memory. The Method of Loci helps you remember by associate certain objects with certain places. Within this method are different exercises. The peg word system is one way. The idea behind this system is organizing sets of memorized words. Another, the keyword method, is often used to help people who are learning another language. There are other techniques. Most of us are familiar with acronyms and acrostic. Acronyms, of course, use the first letter (which seems to be the most important letter of a word when it comes to remembering) to form this remembering tool (i.e. NASA, PETA, FDA). This method is very informative. It can tell you order and even remind you not only of a forgotten word, but what that words starts with. Acrostic just uses the letter of the words you want to remember and forms a sentence to help you remember. The textbook addresses how we remember faces. There are three steps: playing close attention to the pronunciation and finding an alternative phrase (or name) for it (that sounds like it), finding a feature that stands out on the person, and the third stage is taking a feature that stands out and associating it with a substitute word.

The textbook does not address the way in which people like Virgil remember; by touch. Related, one part in the in the AOM book (that I will remember) is the cross-modal transfer such as Virgil did with the alphabet and S.B. did with the hands of a clock.

I did enjoy this chapter. It was very truthfully in the ups and downs that Virgil and his family experienced. I shall also remember that in the end Virgil got to live life the way he knew it and felt the most comfortable without the pressures of other people trying to force him to see like the rest of us. The last thing I know I’ll remember is how you have to learn size and distance; how you have to learn how to see. It was hard (pretty impossible, really) to imagine how a person who has gone so long without seeing and then is exposed to that sense is not really seeing, at most, they are seeing in abstract, because they don’t know how to see. They don’t know what a face looks like. I really like that this (and all the chapters I’ve read so far) seem to be so unbiased. Sacks doesn’t seem to throw others opinions and/or feelings out the window, and he tries to look at all sides and possibilities (i.e. the different explanations for why Virgil lost his sight again in the end). I can’t think of anything in particular that I didn’t like about this chapter.

Before reading this chapter I was aware that people who are blind and later gain sight often struggle but every time I am forced to think about just what that means, it slaps me in the face (an AHA moment). It’s shocking when you think about it all. However, I didn’t know that the brain could shut-down to prevent overload (in fact, I didn’t know that brain could actually have a physical overload . . . that explains a lot . . . just kidding). This chapter shares a lot with other chapters such as memory, sight, behavior, and issues with colors. This chapter did make me wonder about the position of acceptance in the mind. Virgil’s family and his wife and the stages they went through and what they were willing to accept and what they weren’t and the fluctuation in time made me wonder about it.

Terms: memory, sensory system, Short-term Memory (STM), Long-term Memory (LTM), Maintenance Rehearsal, Elaborative Rehearsal, the Method of Loci, Peg Word System, associate,the Keyword Method, acronyms, acrostic