Chapter 3

This chapter had a lot of surprising and interesting things. If a person is not fully blind they are still able to see a little, right? Well of course the answer is yes, but what I learned with the dual processing, the eye sends information to different parts of the brain and allows us to see a little. There is multiple parts, if one part is damaged then your mind can fill in the rest of the little you do see. For example, this one person had too much Carbon Dioxide while taking a shower and is now partially blind. She is able to recognize and discriminate objects. Her brain activity is normal in the area concerned with reaching or grasping objects, but damaged in the area concerned with consciously recognizing objects.

The second thing I found interesting and surprising was in the book it had a story about one person who got in a car accident and was not consciously aware of anything. When the doctors took a scan of her brain they found something that said differently. when they asked her to think about playing tennis her scans told them that she was responding to what they told her to do even though her body wasn't moving. I found this very interesting and didn't know that could happen.

Another thing I learned was I now know why there is a law against talking on your cell phone while driving. I always thought this was a stupid law because it's just like you are talking to a person next to you. But if you are talking and holding the phone to your ear you can cause an accident. I see how this is a law because as I read, you might think you can multitask, but what your mind is really doing is switching from one thing to the other without realizing it. If your are talking with your arm up and driving your are doing more things then if you were just driving with one other person. But I still have one question then, If your do it all the time wouldn't your subconscious do everything for you, like it said, your subconscious is doing things you don't even notice you are doing, so it just feels like your are just focused on the road?

One thing that I don't really agree with in the book is that they say that there are genes to becoming an acoholic or can be able to be addicted to drugs. I strongly disagree with it because I believe that it is how you grow up and what is around you. My dad smokes and is addicted to it, I would never in my life smoke. You also hear about children with two parents that smoke and they don't smoke. It's all about your surroundings and how you got brought up with peer pressure and such.