Page 684 - Atlas of Creation Volume 4

Other perceptual defects or errors in the brain also demonstrate this. One such is cortical color blind-

ness. If the area V4 in the brain, which involves processing color, is damaged, sufferers see the world in
shades of gray. Everything appears like a black-and-white film. Yet such people have no problems with
reading a newspaper, recognizing people’s faces or movements and determining direction. If the midd-
81
le temporal visual area (MT) is damaged, patients can still read and see colors, but cannot tell in which
direction and how fast a thing is moving.
Prof. Ramachandran has written this on the subject:

When one or more areas are selectively damaged, you are confronted with paradoxical mental states of the
kind seen in a number of neurological patients. One of the most famous examples in neurology is the case of

a Swiss woman (whom I shall call Ingrid) who suffered from “motion blindness.” Ingrid had bilateral da-
mage to an area of her brain called the middle temporal (MT) area. In most respects, her eyesight was nor-
mal; she could name shapes of objects, recognize people and read books with no trouble. But if she looked at
a person running or a car moving on the highway, she saw a succession of static, strobelike snapshots inste-
ad of the smooth impression of continuous motion. She was terrified to cross the street because she couldn’t

estimate the velocity of oncoming cars, though she could identify the make, color and even the license plate
of any vehicle. She said that talking to someone in person felt like talking on the phone, because she couldn’t
see the changing facial expressions associated with normal conversation. Even pouring a cup of coffee was

an ordeal because the liquid would inevitably overflow and spill onto the floor. She never knew when to
slow down, changing the angle of the coffeepot, because she couldn’t estimate how fast the liquid was rising
in the cup. All of these abilities ordinarily seem so effortless to you and me that we take them for granted.
It’s only when something goes wrong, as when this motion area is damaged, that we begin to realize how
sophisticated vision really is. 82

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