Stream Of Illusion

         Stream Of Illusion is a text that talks about awareness and consciousness. Rita Carter, the author wants to show us how weak is our ability to get all what we have in our surrounding. When we focus on something, we do not really pay attention to what is going on in the outside of this thing that is, we know what we aim to know.

          There is also another part, which essentially deals with the ability of our senses to mislead us. We can in fact be misled quite easily. The author also discusses how our brain captures an image of our surrounding and uses this image to identify what is happening around. The example given in the text by the author is that while reading a book, you might think you are aware of what is happening around you. If something moves in the left of your vision interval, and you are focusing on the text, you will probably miss this event since you only have a brain image of your surroundings, which means your brain needs to update somehow the image it has in order to be aware of the motion. There is also a part where the author talks about an experiment conducted in Harvard University, where the participants have to read carefully a paper given, and give it back after a certain period. The experiment is to prove how accurate is our perception of tiny but significant changes. The participant were actually faced to two different people, one that gives the paper, and the other that collects it just after the period is completed. Only few participants noticed that there was somebody else that collected the paper that has different characteristics (hair, eyes…). The others, when asked, were not able to say something about that and were still thinking that it was the same person that gave the paper, that collected it afterwards.