Sight Unseen: An Exploration of Conscious and Unconscious Vision - Hardcover

Goodale, Melvyn A.; Milner, A. David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198510527 ISBN 13: 9780198510529

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2003

Synopsis

Vision, more than any other sense, dominates our mental life. Our visual experience is so rich and so detailed, that we can hardly distinguish that experience from the world itself. Even when we just think about the world and don't look at it directly, we can't help but imagine what it looks like. We think of 'seeing' as being an exclusively conscious activity - we direct our eyes, we choose what we look at, we register what we are seeing. The research described in this book has radically altered this attitude towards vision. The odyssey begins and ends with the story of a young woman (here called 'Dee') apparently blind to the shapes of things in her visual world due to a devastating brain accident. As their investigations unfolded, Milner and Goodale found that Dee wasn't in fact 'form-blind' at all - she could register the shapes of objects unconsciously, though she didn't at first realise it. Taking us on a journey into the unconscious brain, the two scientists who made this discovery tell the amazing story of their work, and the surprising conclusions about the normal brain's hidden capacities they were forced to reach. Written to be accessible to students and popular science readers, this book is a fascinating illustration of how the study of a damaged brain can reveal much about the human condition.

About this title

Review

... a rewarding book ... The approach is refreshingly humane. (Times Literary Supplement)

Given the authors' clear and precise language and their stated aim to write an accessible book (which they achieve), this volume is a perfect Christmas present for anyone even remotely interested in the brain ... Sight Unseen is not just a book for readers of popular science, demonstrating how much can be learned about brain function from patient studies; even specialists in neuroscience and neuropsychology could learn something ... The book illustrates the enormous amount of knowledge to be gained from analysing deficits of specific stroke patients. It closes by stating: "Studying the way the brain reorganizes itself in response to severe damage presents one of the most important challenges to neuroscience in the twenty-first century." How true. (Nature, Vol 429)

Goodale and Milner's book is a detailed but non-tech survey of the state of the art. There's more going on than you think, and they do an excellent job of explaining it. (Focus (Science and Technology))

About the Author

In the 1990s, David Milner and Mel Goodale published a book for OUP, now considered to one of the most important psychology books of the last 20 years - one that significantly altered our understanding of the nature of consciousness - 'The visual brain in action'. The book is one of the most frequently cited books in the field of consciousness (most recently by Nobel Laureate - Francis Crick).

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0198510527
• ISBN 13: 9780198510529
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 152