Changing BlindnessAfter studying spatial cognition and cognitive map construction in my previous article, "Where Am I Going? Where Have I Been: Spatial Cognition and Navigation", and having grown In my understanding of the most complex elements of the nervous system, the development of an informed discussion on human perception became possible. The formation of cognitive maps, which serve as internal representations of the world, depends on human capacities for vision and visual perception (1). Objects introduced into the field of vision are translated into electrical messages which activate the neurons of the retina. The resulting retinal message is organized into multiple sensation forms and is transmitted to the brain so that neural representations of a given environment can be recorded as memory (2). I suggested in my previous article that these neural representations must be maintained and progressively updated with each successive change in environment and eye movement. Furthermore, I have argued that this information processing produces a constant and stable experience of a dynamic external world (1). However, a myriad of studies and the testimony of any motorist who has had the unfortunate experience of hitting an invisible object contradict the universality of this assertion and highlight a striking reality: human beings do not always see objects presented in their visual field nor alterations in their visual field. an observed scene (3,4,5,6,7,8,9). The inability to consciously witness change when distracted for a few milliseconds by saccades or artificial blinks is called "change blindness." In order to understand this phenomenon, the physical act of looking and the process of seeing must be different...... middle of paper ......47/print5)Cognet, a site on Cognitionhttp://cognet. mit.edu/perspective/item.tcl?msg_id=00005N6)Memory For centrally assisted changing objects upon accidental change in the real world, an article by Levin, Simons, Angelone and Chabrishttp://wjg.harvard.edu /~cfc/ Levin2002.pdf7) Scott-Brown, KC & Orbach, HS (1998) "Contrast discrimination, non-uniform patterns, and change blindness". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. 256 (1410): 2159-2164.8)Max Planck Institutehttp://wjg.harvard.edu/~cfc/Levin2002.pdf9)A sensorimotor account of vision and visual awareness, 2001 Behavioral and Brain Sciences articlehttp ://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/05/06/bbs00000506-00/index.html10)Glasgow Caledonian University, current research in vision scienceshttp://www.gcal.ac.uk /sls/Vision/index.htmlresearch /current_research/h.html