Dr. Melvyn Goodale - Pivotal Experiments

Dr. Goodale considers the most exciting, important of his research endeavours to be work with a “visual agnosic” woman known as DF. DF was able to see colour, motion, and texture of objects, but could not work out their orientation. She was totally unable to comprehend object shape; she couldn’t even tell if an object was horizontal or vertical! When asked to pick up an object, however, she knew where it was and how to orient her hand to grab it. That is, she was able to comprehend shape with her hands, but not with her eyes.

Dr. Goodale and his colleague at the time, Dr. David Milner, postulated that there were two ways of storing information about an object’s shape: one for perception, the other for action. He and other researchers continue to explore this topic today, equipped with modern scientific technology. Dr. Goodale does many functional MRI studies, trying to see which areas of the brain are most active during certain tasks.