PSYCO104 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Visual Agnosia, Excessive Daytime Sleepiness, Non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCO104
• Professor: Michele Moscicki

Document Summary

Consciousness: conscious awareness of oneself and one"s environment: behaviourism considered consciousness a mere byproduct of behaviour. Pet/fmri studies implicate multiple areas of association cortex (which organize and integrate sensory information) for these two aspects of consciousness. Could not an unconscious automaton have performed the. Hard questions: what can visual agnosias reveal about consciousness, visual form agnosia: person cannot visually perceive global structure (e. g. , object identity, shape, orientation), despite intact low-level sensory processing (e. g. , acuity, colour, and brightness discrimination) Patient d. f. has diffuse damage to occipital temporal cortex. Cannot recognize, discriminate, or copy complex visual forms, like shapes. Oliver sacks" patient dr. p. has damage in visual association cortex. Able to copy pictures, but cannot identify them. Patient d. b. had primary visual cortex removed. Can correctly guess which way a line is moving, and can grasp objects. Some patients can identify facial expressions implication: some aspects of vision are not conscious.