blindsight

El Blobbo has mentioned VS Ramachandran several times already. Borrowbox, Irish Libraries portal to ear-books and e-books is not limited to media which has at some point been issued on paper. One example is The Reith Lectures - 10 of the Best [2022, BBC]. The Beeb went to some trouble to pick 10 different Reith Lecturers [from a stable of ~75] and then fillet out One of the lectures from that pundit's series. It's going to be random and eclectic; but I guess they will have left the right doozies on the cutting room floor. "The BBC found that some of the audio archive of the Reith Lectures was missing from its library and appealed to the public for copies of the missing lectures"!!

They chose to include  Ramachandran talking about blindsight - the curious phenomenon where people who are stone blind because of damage to the striate cortex can nevertheless reliably point to an apple that is presented in front of their face. This may be through activation of, and processing by, the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) - a part of the brain which normally activates to assess speed and direction of moving objects. I guess the evidence for blindsight pans out . . . but the jury is still out on the mechanism?  Just when the audience [me] is putting on their skeptic hat and thinking up alternative explanations, Ramachandran pauses to say "But we all have blindsight when we drive".

I worked for 8 years at The Institute. During that time I clocked up about 100,000 km going back and forth on my 40km commute. I drove through the familiar landscape without hitting the curb (mostly not) or sheep (never) while listening to whatever audio I had on the go. Or giving orders to myself about marking lab-books or delivering lectures.

Distraction while driving a lethal instrument is much increased if someone else is in the car and we are nattering. Early one morning, I clocked up a fine and 3 penalty points in Enniscorthy when I was taking my sister to the ferry from Rosslare. It was a fair cop but I was completely oblivious to 30 cu.m. of camera-van outside the Community College until I got the penalty point notice in the post 5 days later. My retina got the image and sent it up the chain of command but there was nobody home in the visual cortex.

There's A Lot of data cluttering up other parts of my brain, though. The Beloved bumped into an acquaintance in Waterford City the other day whose first name, luckily, she knew. She knew the husband's name as well. But neither of us could remember their surname. That sort of thing annoys me so I tend to work at a solution. Several times that evening I could feel their name coming to the surface. But each time I gave the wisp full attention and tried to fish it out, it squidged out of my grasp and was gone. The following morning that name came to me as I was on my second cup of tea. 

• Where was it hiding?
• Why would we have a storage system that was so hard of access?
• What is the longest river in Spain?
• When is the next pub quiz?

PS. Another I R Old failure (of hearing this time) the other day. We're getting contractors in who need payment. I'm doing this on-line because I'm not that Old. One payment was in "processing" for a long time so I called the Bank's support line. That put me through to a gatekeeper, to whom I explained my problem. After a while she said brightly "I'll just put you on to rapine and steam" I repeated this back in my best incredulous tone and she repeated at dealing with imbecile pace "I'll just put you on to Our . Payment . System"