The Mind's Eye
Oliver Sacks - The Mind's Eye
Book is very similar to the Man Who Took His Wife for a Hat and Anthropologist in Mars and actually refers to those books several times in notes and footnotes. In fact, the amount of notes has apparently increased. One chapter can now be expanded from a fate of a single patient to numerous other historical examples.
These cases are related to vision - which actually means the parts of the brain that interpret and handle visual perception, not just the eyes.
These are people like a gallerist, who after brain hemorrhage has a paralyzed right side and aphasia. Apparently some cannot read but can actually write - but not understand what they wrote. Nightmare for a writer, to be sure; Pianist who cannot read, even musical notes - but can still play piano, only without looking at the notes; Somebody can recognize the category of an object (living or unliving), but cannot recognize the object itself.
This time Sacks also writes about his own neurological problems - he has prosopagnosia (he cannot recognize faces) and almost complete lacks of sense of direction. Sacks cannot recognize landmarks - he needs as assistant. In a previous book he wrote about strangeness of his damaged leg; this time he writes about the partial loss of vision of his right eye - he lost his stereoscopic vision.
There is also a matter that people who have the same neurological problem - in this case, blindness - may have entirely different experiences and attitudes about their ailment. Which did not surprise me that much.
John Hull's Touching the Rock presents only one point of view and other blind people do not share it. Some still maintain a visual point of view, others don't. One of these was the French Resistance member Jacques Lusseyran (whose memories I have failed to find in English). Unlike Hull, he created his own visual world around him.
And if you cannot speak properly, the doctor may treat you as a retard even if you can think properly in your own mind. Ability to communicate affects the perception of educated physicians as well. So they are denied therapy, which leads to further deterioration.
(I have learned to move my right eye to get temporary stereoscopic vision i have effectively lost due to strabismus. I look at the world with my left eye. I have to consciously maintain binocular vision and it makes my head ache. )
Of course, all we ever hear about are those who have internal mental and intellectual "tools" in their mind they can use to tell about it.
This entry was originally posted at http://elfbiter.dreamwidth.org/2472.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Book is very similar to the Man Who Took His Wife for a Hat and Anthropologist in Mars and actually refers to those books several times in notes and footnotes. In fact, the amount of notes has apparently increased. One chapter can now be expanded from a fate of a single patient to numerous other historical examples.
These cases are related to vision - which actually means the parts of the brain that interpret and handle visual perception, not just the eyes.
These are people like a gallerist, who after brain hemorrhage has a paralyzed right side and aphasia. Apparently some cannot read but can actually write - but not understand what they wrote. Nightmare for a writer, to be sure; Pianist who cannot read, even musical notes - but can still play piano, only without looking at the notes; Somebody can recognize the category of an object (living or unliving), but cannot recognize the object itself.
This time Sacks also writes about his own neurological problems - he has prosopagnosia (he cannot recognize faces) and almost complete lacks of sense of direction. Sacks cannot recognize landmarks - he needs as assistant. In a previous book he wrote about strangeness of his damaged leg; this time he writes about the partial loss of vision of his right eye - he lost his stereoscopic vision.
There is also a matter that people who have the same neurological problem - in this case, blindness - may have entirely different experiences and attitudes about their ailment. Which did not surprise me that much.
John Hull's Touching the Rock presents only one point of view and other blind people do not share it. Some still maintain a visual point of view, others don't. One of these was the French Resistance member Jacques Lusseyran (whose memories I have failed to find in English). Unlike Hull, he created his own visual world around him.
And if you cannot speak properly, the doctor may treat you as a retard even if you can think properly in your own mind. Ability to communicate affects the perception of educated physicians as well. So they are denied therapy, which leads to further deterioration.
(I have learned to move my right eye to get temporary stereoscopic vision i have effectively lost due to strabismus. I look at the world with my left eye. I have to consciously maintain binocular vision and it makes my head ache. )
Of course, all we ever hear about are those who have internal mental and intellectual "tools" in their mind they can use to tell about it.
This entry was originally posted at http://elfbiter.dreamwidth.org/2472.html. Please comment there using OpenID.