At any given time, a massive flow of sensory stimulation reaches our senses, but our conscious mind seems to gain access to only a very small amount of it. Every morning as I drive to work, I pass the same houses without ever noticing the color of their roof or the number of their windows. As I sit at my desk and concentrate on writing this book, my retina is bombarded with information about the surrounding objects, photographs, and paintings, their shapes and colors. Simultaneously, my ears are stirred with music, birdsong, noise from the neighbors—and yet all these distracting bits remain in the unconscious background while I focus on … Continue reading Stanislas Dehaene