I Can't Believe My Eyes!

The question we need to answer is, can we really believe our eyes?

For those of us who are lucky not to be visually impaired, we take a lot for granted. We see the world around us in three dimensional technicolor and do not for even for one microseconds stop to appreciate or wonder how this is remotely possible. It is only when the words in that novel or newspaper seem blurred to us do we begin to wonder and reach for medical help. The brain that controls our senses is in fact the least understood organ in our body. 

The brain is a complex maze which holds more secrets than Pandora,s box. But though the brain gives us vision it can also deceive us and seeing is not always believing. A dehydrated man lost in the desert can see a vision of an oasis looming at him when none exists. The brain can play tricks. This was further shown in Dr. Ramachandron documentary, where the patient is able to still perceive his amputated limb. In fact patients have been able to feel pain in limbs that no longer exist which leads to the phantom brain syndrome. Perhaps put simply in layman terms we feel or see what we want to. The dying man desperately wants to believe there is an oasis in the same way the amputated man wants to believe his leg still exists, so they perceive their existence and the brain surely registers this request and complies with it's visual or sensory response.

 But sometimes we don't need our eyesight to see as shown by the case history examples. This further brings to mind why blind people develop greater sensitivity in their other senses, which medically we are born with five. But as many greater thinkers and medical practitioners have observed or claimed there is a sixth sense. This reminds me of the karate guru who would train his disciple to train blindfolded. As only in this state was he able to truly sense the enemy and predict the moves of his combatant. Similarly he was able to develop the pArt of the brain that controls physical reaction of fight and flight. His eyesight instead of helping him had hindered him as the large visual picture sent to me signals at once that confused and slowed his brain making him lose focus. It is this sixth sense that makes us turn around to face a person that is staring at us even when we cannot see the person in question even in our peripheral vision. 

So do blind people see more than those visually unimpaired is a question for debate, but it is an interesting thought. But the truth is that we do not always see the truth before our eyes, hence the phrase, "Love is blind," and "Are you blind," have cropped up when others look at the same thing a person or object but their sensory perception and interpretation of what they see can differ in opinion from someone elses. The mysteries of the brain are complex and yes, "There is a great deal more to perception than meets the eye." and this has been explained in medical detailed terms in the literature, " phantoms in the brain".One of the main points in this piece is the notion that we need to stop thinking of images in the brain and instead think about symbolic descriptions, in order to understand perception. Descriptions on paper symbolise the visual at hand. Translated our brain receives a multitude of signals through neurones which are processed and the bits of pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are assembled to give a complete picture of events. When we damage some part of our brain some of the pieces get jumbled up. Yes, a very simplistic explanation to the most complicated and least understood part of the human body.

 Psychiatrists often use pictures shaded in black to understand our mental state of mind. By staring at the picture card one patient can clearly see a vase while another sees the object as a woman,s face. Both patients are correct in their observations it is just that they differ in their perception. It is like the age old adage, " is the glass half full or half empty". Of course there is no right or wrong answer. The optimistic, fulfilled person will perceive the glass as half full which parallels his view of his personal life. On the other hand the person who has a grudge to bear with the world and had many unfulfilled ambitions will perceive the glass as half empty. So there is an aspect of vision of what is in front of us such as, let us say a pair of shoes and there is an aspect of vision of what we perceive. But sometimes we don,t want to see something so we pretend or convince ourselves that if we close our eyes the thing will go away but of course it will not. For example an ostrich digs it's head in the sand at the sight of danger and in the same way a child covers his eyes during a scary scene. If we cannot see it surely it does not exist is the signal we want to send to our brain. In the reverse way, we sometimes see bad things that do not exist borne of an innate sense of fear. This is why lying alone in bed in the dark we perceive shadows to be monsters when none exist, and the next morning the sunshine filled room dispels our fears as foolish. In fact as this writing by Ramachandran clearly states the only phantoms are in our brain.