Brain Pudding

I am reading a book about the brain. It is utterly fascinating. It has the density of concrete, so reading it is like swimming in concrete. And working to understand it is like wearing concrete.

It has amazing information, like the path sensory input takes from the moment it enters your optical nerve to when it is synthesized and integrated into emotional ties and other memories. The first step is raw data of colors and lines. The second step is integrating that into a cohesive picture, a single object. And the third step is comparing that object against what you already know to recognize it as familiar and give it a name and a connection of meaning in your mind. 

There is actually a condition where the transmitted information is halted at the first level, which you would assume means blindness, since you can't do anything with that raw kind of data. And to the conscious mind, that person perceives themselves as blind. But yet they can navigate a room and identify objects without seeing them. It's called blindsight. And this book proposes that it is because the first level can be accessed by the subconscious and pass that information along to the conscious awareness through less obvious routes. So you can see without seeing.

I am starting to feel like my brain is not a complicated web of neurons, but in fact pudding. A big blob of out-of-shape couch-potato-style pudding. Because thirty minutes of reading this meaty information and I'm nodding off. What has happened to me? Where is that razor focus I had ten years ago? It seemed I could plow through this kind of stuff without drowsiness back then. Has my brain just gone soft, or is it simply that a decade of existence has depleted my ability to sink my teeth into science?

I think I've just gone soft. I kept thinking, if there were only a story in here about a person, I could relate. I could keep my focus. I need a human angle to keep awake.

I didn't use to need a human angle. It used to be good for it's own sake. I think my left brain has gone to sleep and needs to be woken up a little. 

So I'll keep plowing through this book, twenty five pages at a time, because that's all I can do before I doze off. maybe tomorrow I'll get 30 pages in. You never know.

And when I finish, I'll tell you all the good parts. And I'll include human angles.