Final Blog Entry

It sounds a bit crazy, and maybe unsympathetic, but I always enjoy hearing about perception-related disorders. They reflect evidence and embodiment of what we have learned, and they may also just be strange, opening up our eyes to new perspectives, to different ways of living life and functioning in this world.

The most fascinating disorder that I read about this semester was Anton’s syndrome. Blake describes Anton’s syndrome as “a neurological condition in which a cortically blind person denies his or her blindness.” In one of the quirks of the human brain’s structure, the cortical area for visual processing is separate from the cortical area for visual awareness. If both are damaged at once, Anton’s can result.

Apparently the only way for someone with the syndrome to realize and accept their blindness is through physical trial-and-error: they describe what they are “seeing” with confidence (which is inaccurate), but eventually have enough trouble navigating to evoke doubt.

On the site ScienceIQ.com, David Gamon discusses some of the peculiarities of the condition: “the really weird thing about it is that they’re not lying… they really are convinced that they can see.” Conscious awareness and reasoning are completely disconnected from actual physical perception.

Or, perhaps, are these people still actively seeing, just seeing in a different way? We have discussed color-blindness, and how people who are color-blind still see the world, just not as the majority of humanity sees it. And we have discussed how some animals have only one or two cone pigments, and some have eyes more laterally placed on their heads. Is Anton’s just another mode of sight? Or another deficit of the visual system, like blind spots?

I’d have to say no. The examples described are biological differences derived from differences in receptors; Anton’s is caused by neurological damage. And deficits are evolved so that the brain has adapted to them, and can manage to work around them, whereas Anton’s is a complete and sudden loss of accurate visual information. People with Anton’s aren’t just perceiving the world differently – say, through a different filter; the neurological signals they are processing are misfires.

To an English major like myself, I see something almost comically literate about such a condition: the disconnect between reality and perception, between the internal and external, etc. It seems like someone should write a story, or at least a TV episode, about it. In the end, though, I’d have to say I’m grateful that it’s one more disorder that I don’t have to actually deal with myself. Functional perception is a useful thing.