"When a person glimpses the face of a famous actor, sniffs a favourite food or hears the voice of a friend, recognition is instant. Within a fraction of a second after the eyes, nose, ears, tongue or skin is stimulated, one knows the object is familiar and whether it is desirable or dangerous. How does such recognition, which psychologists call preattentive perception, happen so accurately and quickly, even when the stimuli are complex and the …showed first 75 words of 5267 total…

…showed last 75 words of 5267 total…reorganize themselves and reach into their environment to change it to their own advantage. The poet William Blake wrote: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite." Such cleansing would not be desirable. Without the protection of the doors of perception-that is, without the self-controlled chaotic activity of the cortex, from which perceptions spring-people and animals would be overwhelmed by eternity." - Copyright 1991: Walter J. Freeman