Re: blindness and identity
One good example for importance of informations for building a mental map happened to me just about a month ago.
It was morning, I just woke up in my bed and assumed, that a new day is starting. When I found... an arm. Someone's arm, lying in my bed.
That was the first surprise, an alien arm in a bed for one person is not something you'd see very often.
I assumed that someone is crouching near my bed, with his / her arm lying on it. The position would quite match that state, so i have stopped moving and started listening. But noone was there, I didn't catch any sounds typical for human presence, like breathing, moving, etc.
Another wtf, what is an arm without an owner doing in my bed? That's even weirder than someone being around.
Because arms don't produce sound, and tasting or smelling it wouldn't give me any useful informations, I have used my touch, right hand, to track the arm's owner.
After a while, I found, that the arm is connected to my body!
What the f-**k?! Although I didn'ŧ want to believe it at first, it was really my arm. But I didn't sense anything in it, infact, I have realized that I am one-handed at that point.
When I lifted it with my right hand, it was really like lifting a hand of someone else, absolutely no response.
Because reclamation probably wouldn't help me much, I tried to repair it myself. After some massaging, it slowly started taking sense back and after few minutes, I was able to use my left arm, like nothing had happened.
This thing is a quite common problem, sometimes called a numb arm or dead arm. It's caused by compression of nerves controlling the arm, if you sleep on it.
And it's especially interesting encountering it as blind, there is really no reason to consider that arm to be yours until you find the connection.
It nicely highlights the importance of the information flow to understanding things around us.
Also, it is a good example of ability of our brains to analyse a probability of every information and making judges on them.
This wasn't the first time when I encountered the numb arm, it happens from time to time, as I musn't sleep on my back due to health reasons. And its always surprising, because these informations are one of the first processed after waking up.
However, besides numb arm, I have also encountered numb... le'ts call it genitals.
This can occur as well, for the same reason as numb arm. However, I didn't get it in bed, but probably in a bad sitting position during a day.
And while it was definitely weird, totally no response after touching, I was not surprised in means of who do they belong to. They were there just few minutes ago, it must be them.
They're probably just getting updated or something.
Note here, how does the availability of reliable informations change the view. Human brain is a truly amazing machine.
Best regards
Rastislav
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