Psychology Stuff: Anger Management

Contents:
1) aggression solutions that don't work
2) solutions that do work
3) aggressive triggers/cues
4) mitigating information
5) sources of aggression

First, some quick definitions:
This post deals with anti-social aggression: aggression which violates social norms. There are two types.

Instrumental anti-social aggression is aggression used as a means to an end (in cold blood), where as hostile anti-social aggression is aggression based in anger (not goal-oriented). This post deals specifically with the hostile kind.

There is also pro-social aggression, which is aggression required by social norms (what the police do), and sanctioned aggression which is allowed by the social norms, such as aggression while playing a sport, or in self-defense. Neither of these will be addressed here.

Provocation is anything which is an event which is irritating or offensive and makes the person want to respond similarly (be irritating or offensive back). In order to provoke someone, the provocation must be perceived as deliberate. If the person legitimately thinks you didn't mean to piss them off, they'll still be pissed, but will not act aggressively. Note that it does not have to actually be deliberate, all that matters is that the person PERCEIVE it that way.


1. Aggressions solutions that don't work.
When you are angry, do NOT punch the wall. This is a huge misconception that has spread like wildfire.

This was based on the idea of catharsis; that an emotion must be expressed and let out to relieve it. This may be true of things like sadness, suggesting that when you are sad, bawling your eyes out will help. However, this is not the case for all emotions, such as anger.

When you are angry, studies have demonstrated time and time again that attempting to relieve your aggression through catharsis only increases it. Punching a wall or your pillow, screaming, playing an aggressive sport; all of these will only serve to make you more angry and increase your chances of acting out aggressively in the future. If getting it out actually helped, then wouldn't football players and hockey players almost never get in fights off the field? Of course, they might be naturally more aggressive, which draws them to the sport, but despite this the studies still show an increase in their aggression levels. (Bushman, Baumiester, & Stack, 1999).

Another non-solution is punishment. Even Skinner, the man who insisted that we are ruled by a system of punishment and reward, admitted that punishment will not reduce levels of aggression. If your child throws a tantrum, or won't share, or skips school, throw their ass in time out. If they punch the shit out of another kid, you're going to need to find a different solution. As a parent, you might choose to punish them simply on principle (I know I would), but know that that alone will not reduce their aggression levels. They need to learn how to regulate their aggressive emotions more properly, and punishment simply does not do that.



2. Solutions that do work
The solution: incompatible responses. There are certain emotions you can feel at the same time, like happy and sad. We all know that as the experience referred to as 'bitter sweet.' However, some cannot happen at the same time, such as anxiety and calm. You cannot feel them both; instead one wins out over the other.

Aggression has three incompatible emotions: sympathy, humor, and mild sexual arousal.

Baron (1983) did the coolest study ever. Through a series of people with walkie talkies watching the approaching vehicles, he managed to get a car first in line at a stop light, containing a researcher, where a single car with a male driver in it and no passengers would pull up behind them.
The picture depicts what happens when a male with no other passengers drives by the assistant. If the car contained a female driver or a number of people then the assistant did not tell them to go.


When the red light turned green, the person in the first car (researcher) would not drive forward until the person behind them (participant) honked, or until it had turned red again and then back to green, meaning you either honk or sit through one entire green light and both red lights. This was done in a less busy part of town, so that only the 'participant' would be behind the researcher.

In the control condition, where this is all that happened, 90% honked their horn.
In the first experimental condition, a woman in rather non-descript, non-provocative dress crossed the street just before it turned green. 89% honked at the car.
In the second condition, a woman in a full leg cast crossed the street before it turned green. Only 57% honked. That means 43% sat through an entire green light, and let it turn back to red, without honking once at the car who had not moved.
In the third, a man in a clown suit ran across the intersection throwing confetti before the green light. Only 50% honked.
In the fourth, a woman in an extremely provocative outfit crossed the street. 47% honked.

Over HALF of the men did not honk through an entire green light because they could not get angry while feeling other emotions.
Can you imagine sitting through a green light and not honking?

Now there's a reason why I said mild sexual arousal.
Baron and Belle (1977) found that higher levels of arousal actually increase male aggression.
They brought participants in and had them write an essay. They claimed that another participant was writing an essay as well, and that they would grade each other's papers. In reality that 'other participant' was a confederate (someone who's in on the experiment).
The participants wrote their essay, and then went to a waiting room. Then they were brought into a different room with the confederate. They pick a number to see who goes first, but it's set up so the confederate goes first. The confederate then critiques the participants essay most harshly. They are down-right rude in their response. Also, they have the ability to shock the person for every grammar error and spelling error they find, and other poor writing skills they demonstrated, and they do so often. Naturally the participant is now pissed. The participants then get to do the same to the confederate while grading their essay.

In the control, the participants read boring magazines in the waiting room. The severity of shock they administered to the confederate was about 4.6 volts.
In the first experimental condition, they looked at the Sports illustrated swimsuit issue in the waiting room. They issued a shock of about 3.4 volts.
In the second, they saw pictures of naked women. They delivered a shock of 3.4 volts.
The third group saw pictures of couples having sex. They averaged 2.8 volts.
The fourth group read erotic passages (detailed descriptions of people having sex) which is known to be one of the most erotic forms of stimuli (better even than pictures). They averaged 4 volts.

Being a little turned on negates anger. Being massively turned on brings you right back to where you started.

So, if you need to calm down, try watching a funny movie, talking to someone who had a shitty day, or looking at some playboy (don't start master-baiting, then you'll get really aroused and get aggressive again haha)


This is the only solution I know about. I know nothing about anger management therapies and classes and how effective they are. This is just what I learned about in social psych. My apologies if you were hoping for that.


3. Aggressive triggers/cues

Berkowitz and LePage (1967) showed that guns can serve as a cue to aggression.
They used a similar procedure to the study above. However, in one condition the participants were given harsh criticism (provoked), and in the other they were given mild criticism of their essay (unprovoked).
In the waiting room, some sat in a room with nothing to look at (no cue), some had badminton equipment on the shelves (non-aggressive cue), and others saw guns on the shelves (aggressive cue). The results looked like this:
(number of shocks participant gave confederate was the dependent variable)

provoked unprovoked
aggressive cue: lots of shocks very few or no shocks
non-aggressive cue: a few shocks very few or no shocks

no cue: a few shocks very few or no shocks

As we can see, seeing a gun did not automatically make the person aggressive. However, seeing a gun and then being provoked made them more aggressive than when they were simply provoked without a cue, or with a neutral cue. (This is called an interaction effect)

The same exact results were found in a study where participants in the waiting room saw a movie with pirates or a movie about a track star. While seeing the violent pirate movie didn't make them more aggressive when unprovoked, it did make them more aggressive when provoked.

Conclusion: guns, violent movies, etc. do make you more aggressive, but either way you need to be provoked. They're not going to make you lose your shit over nothing.



4. Mitigating information

Johnson and Rule (1986) conducted a similar experiment where participants met the confederate before grading the essays. They then wrote their essays and the confederate was a harsh grader. Then they took a break and talked, and then the participants got to grade the confederate.
In one condition the confederate told the participant that they were having an awful day right when they first met them. The story was that they had just failed their MCAT's meaning they would not be able to follow their dream of going to med. school. During the break they discussed random things or nothing at all.
In the other condition, the confederate told the participant nothing of consequence when they first met them, and then told them about their bad day during the break AFTER he had already provoked them by grading their essay harshly.

The participants who knew their confederate was having an awful day BEFORE being graded were much less aggressive, when provoked by the confederate, than those who had been given no mitigating information until AFTER the provocation.

Conclusion: if you've had a bad day, tell people. If you were to say something nasty to someone and then apologize and say you're having a bad day, they're still going to be angry. If, on the other hand, you tell them you're having a bad day and then snap at them, they are much more likely to be forgiving. Turns out the emo kids actually have a good life strategy going haha


5. Sources of aggression

Zillman (1983; 1988) came up with the excitation transfer theory.
The graphs below shows the person's physiological arousal level over time. Note that arousal does not mean sexual arousal here, but emotional arousal, such as faster breathing, higher blood pressure and bpm, etc. (This is just an example story to illustrate the point, not the actual studies). In one case, the person has a near-miss accident, goes to the grocery store and then gets behind an old woman in line who's paying her bill in pennies. In the other, all the same things happen, minus the near miss accident.



As you can see, even though the person in the first graph is not consciously aware of their increased levels of physiological arousal, and were therefore unable to note that as the cause of their increased aggression, it actually was still high enough to cause it.

It has also been found that when you are prevented from reaching a goal, resulting in frustration, it increases the likelihood of aggression arising (Dollard, et al., 1939). However, not all frustration results in aggression, and not all aggression comes from frustration (Berkowitz, 1989).


Please take one thing away from this:
STOP RECOMMENDING TO PEOPLE THAT THEY PUNCH SOMETHING OR THROW SOMETHING WHEN THEY'RE MAD. IT DOESN'T WORK!!!!!!

Of course, some people are statistical anomalies and that actually will work for them. However, the existence of a single anomaly does not prove that this isn't true for the majority of people, so please do not comment on here that 'i punch walls and feel better so stfu you're wrong.' Beyond the fact that nothing is true for everyone, eliminating the evidence power of a single example, without studying it in the lab, there's no way to know if you actually get less aggressive or if you just think you do.

Psychology Stuff: Gender and Sexual Orientation

While I thoroughly enjoyed the entire class, this subject might have been the most exciting lesson in biopsych.
In some parts this gets super sciency, so I'll try to pout a more easily worded sentence or two of summation under paragraphs that I think got really complicated.
There's a large section of just biology, which is necesary to understand what's being discussed, but I promise it's going to get into psychology in the second half.

If all the biology bores you, and you want to just take my word for it that even biological sex is not a strict dichotomy, skip it and go straight to the psychology section at the bottom.

Table of contents:
Bio section:
intro, internal development, external development, pseudohermaphroditism
Psych section:
intro, gender identity (including a case study and the implications), sexual orientation



INTRO
As you all know, sperm meets egg, egg carries x, sperm carries either x or y, then you get a zygote which is either xx or xy and will become either female or male, respectively... as long as all goes according to plan. Disregarding those instances of true hermaphrodites, when a person is xxy, this genetic gender is more or less a dichotomy; you are one or the other. After that, however, things get complicated.

The default gender is female. A fetus, whether xx or xy, will develop female genitalia and female brain structures unless exposed to testosterone in the womb. Female fetuses do not require estrogen to become feminized, that's what happens without interference. The male fetus requires testosterone to interfere with development in order to become masculinized.

What usually happens is that females develop normally, and for males a gene on the y chromosome codes for the release of testosterone and other male hormones, making them develop normally as well. However, all normal women's bodies produce some testosterone, including pregnant women. In fact, female testosterone levels have been linked to the strength of the female sex drive, and having sex causes women's bodies to produce testosterone, so the more you have the more you want, as seen here:




This means that even female fetuses become slightly masculinized, to whatever degree they and their mother and producing testosterone. Similarly, some males produce less testosterone and will not be as masculinized as their testosterone filled peers. Moral of this story: genetic gender is more or less a dichotomy, but the expression of gender in both genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, and behavior (related to brain structures) is a sliding scale, with super macho on one end, super feminine on the other, and everyone falling somewhere in between, usually towards the side of their genetic gender.

This is where things can get screwed up. This is also where I'm going to add some photography from the textbook to explain some things. If you're creeped out by diagrams and pictures of genitals stop here lol.


DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTERNAL SEXUAL ORGANS
A fetus which has not yet differentiated contains two gonads, which can become ovaries, or testes if the SRY gene is present (which is carried on the y chromosome). The undifferentiated fetus also contains Mullerian ducts, which will become the uterus, fallopian tubes, and inner vagina, unless the Mullerian inhibiting hormone is present. Once again, female is the default gender. There is also a set of Wollfian ducts, which will wither and be absorbed. In the male, a Mullerian inhibiting hormone is produced, which withers the Mullerian ducts. Then, testosterone causes the Wolffian ducts to develop into the seminal vesicles and vas deferens.
This is called organizing effects, and occurs relatively early in fetal development. Activation effects, on the other hand, come and go, like puberty.

Basically, one set of ducts becomes the internal female genitalia, and the other becomes in the internal male genitalia.
Here's a lovely diagram for you:




DEVELOPMENT OF THE EXTERNAL GENITALIA
As for external genitalia, once again the female is the default. This development, however, does not occur until far into the pregnancy. As you will see in the diagram, at the second trimester the differences are barely distinguishable (don't ask me how the doctors figure it out, I have no idea). The glans becomes a clitoris, or the glans of the penis if dihydrotestosterone is present. Another lump of flesh becomes either the labia minora, or the shaft of the penis, and the labioscrotal swelling becomes either the labia majora or the scrotum. These structures come from the same tissue, meaning, for example, that you could not have both a labia majora and a scrotum.




PSEUDOHERMAPHRODITISM
What you may have caught in that paragraph is that all that is required is the presence of dihydrotestosterone, not that the baby's body is producing it, and that this is undifferentiated for the majority of fetal development. This means the baby is highly susceptible to changes in hormone levels in the mother. Get a little too stressed and produce some extra testosterone while you're pregnant, and your baby girl might come out with a very large clitoris. Take a medication which mimics testosterone while you are pregnant, and you might get something like this:



Take testosterone shots throughout the pregnancy, and your baby girl might have a full grown penis.
This is called female pseudohermaphroditism. In pseudohermaphroditism, the person's gonads match their chromosomes (as opposed to a true hermaphrodite, which has both ovaries and testes), but the external genitalia does not match. The female pseudohermaphrodite has a uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, and an inner vagina, but the external genitalia looks masculine to some degree. Depending on how masculine the genitals look, the parents tend to ask for surgery to make the child look more feminine or masculine, and then raise the child accordingly. We will return to this when I (finally) get into the psychology.


Similarly, if the male baby does not produce testosterone, or it lacks testosterone receptors, it will have labia minor and majora, a clitoris, and the outer vagina. It will be totally indistinguishable from a girl without a DNA test or an MRI. A male baby which produces the Mullerian inhibiting hormone, but cannot produce or use testosterone, will not have a uterus or fallopian tubes, but it will have external female genitalia.
This is called male pseudohermaphroditism. It looks something like this:



Yup, that's an xy male. He is androgen insensitive, one of the many possible causes of male pseudohermaphroditism, meaning you could shoot him up with all the testosterone you want and he'll still look as feminine as ever. he has no receptors for testosterone. The Mullerian inhibiting hormone is still present, meaning no ovaries, fallopian tubes or inner vagina is present. Instead, the outer vagina ends in a blind pouch.
They often do not know they are male until they fail to get their period. Those who are very thin attribute this lack of menstruation to being underweight or exercising a lot (which is known to cause amenorrhea) and don't realize they're not female until they cannot get pregnant and a thorough medical examination revelas their undecended testicles up in thier body.
Because they are still sensitive to estrogen, these individuals, tend to have well developed breasts and a flawless complexion (no testosterone to cause acne). This is often combined with long slender legs, leading these individuals to repeatedly appear as fashion models. Yeah, that episode of House was for real.



Okay, no more biology now, I promise.
ONWARD TO PSYCHOLOGY!!!

INTRO
The question now becomes 'What is gender?'
It's pretty obvious what genetic gender is, but clearly the external genitalia are not telling the whole story. What's even more interesting is the different brain structures which are effected by hormones.

Some definitions:
Sex describes the biological characteristics of the person.
Gender describes the person's behaviors.
A gender role is the set of behaviors society lists as acceptable for a particular gender.
Gender identity is the subjective feeling of being male or female.


GENDER IDENTITY

The influences of testosterone, or lack there of, are felt in the brain as well as in the body.
Here we can see normal male and female rat brains, as well as female rat brains treated with two testosterone replacements:



The Sexually Dimorphic Nuclei (SDN) is clearly largest in the male and the female treated with testosterone, slightly smaller in the female treated with a teststerone replacement, and tiny in the normal female. In this case testosterone had a much larger effect on brain structure, and therefore on behavior, than chromosomal sex did.
This means that, regardless of your genetic sex, if you are exposed to testosterone your brain will be more masculine.

It was thought in the 50's, during the behaviorist movement which was all nurture and no nature, that gender identity was totally the product of upbringing. They cited the fact that many individuals born with ambiguous genitalia tended to accept the gender they were raised in. It has been contested by those who believe in the gender-at-birth hypothesis that this data actually supports their claims, because individuals with ambiguous genitalia tend to be raised as the gender their genitalia most resembled. This means they were probably raised as the gender their hormones most reflected. They cite the fact that individuals with totally unambiguous genitalia have never been successfully reassigned to another gender.

CASE STUDY
Case and point: David Reimer.
This case study was a psychologists dream, with all variables naturally controlled for. Bruce was born in 1965 with a twin brother. His brother's circumcision was successful, but Bruce's was botched, causing his entire penis to need to be removed. This was before the days when surgery could create a penis, so his parents decided to just raise him as a girl. Surgery made Bruce's genitals look feminine, and his parents gave him estrogen supplements when he reached puberty, and he was renamed Brenda.
While Brenda's psychologists happily reported that she was totally accepting her feminine role, things were far less peachy. Brenda was a tomboy, constantly teased by her classmates, who called her a caveman. She wanted to urinate standing, and began using the boy's bathroom. She preferred her brother's toy trucks to her own toy dolls. At the age of 11 she had decided that she was definitely a boy. At age 14 she decided to make the transition to being a male, and her father told her the truth.
By age 25 Brenda had been renamed David, had his breasts removed (which developed under estrogen treatment), had a penis constructed, and married a woman with 3 children.
Unfortunately, after 14 years of marriage, his wife asked for a divorce, unable to deal with the depression he suffered. He took his own life in 2004.


IMPLICATIONS
Cases like this have been used by many psychologists to advocate that a child with ambiguous genitalia be allowed to choose on their own what gender they are. Often times parents of children with ambiguous genitalia elect for surgery at birth and pick a gender to assign to their child, but should they choose the wrong one they often subject their child to a lifetime or troubles. Many children with ambiguous genitalia who are not assigned to a sex choose their own at some point, while others choose to remain intersex. Concern arises as to whether a child raised intersex might be tormented by their classmates for their ambiguous appearance.



SEXUAL ORIENTATION
Similarly to the SDN, the MPOA has an increased density in males, and the AH has an increased density in females.
However, when you stimulate the males AH and the female's MPOA, you can get something like this:



That's the female rat on top. Stimulate the male rat's AH and he will engage in the female version of rat flirting when a male walks by.

Super cuteness tidbit: A female rat flirts by jumping up and down and twitching her ears. Awwwww

The male rat will also engage in lordosis, the receptive sexual posture of the female rat, in which the rat arches it's back and moves it's tail to the side.
Essentially, you can induce homosexual behavior if you stimulate the proper areas of the brain.


Similarly, the brain structures of homosexuals and heterosexuals differ. Here we see the INAH3 in a heterosexual vs. a homosexual male:



The INAH3 of a female, while not pictured here, most resembles that of the homosexual male. INAH3 regulates sexual behavior in animals.

Additionally, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is large in homosexual males than in heterosexual males, and the anterior commisure (AC) is larger in homosexual males and heterosexual females than in heterosexual males.
The SCN regulates the reproductive cycle. The AC is involved in communication between the two hemispheres. Women tend to have much greater communication between the two sides of the brain, and homosexual males display this tendency as well.


And here we have the response of a female, a homosexual male and a heterosexual male to a male pheromone (note that pheromones cannot be consciously detected):



Similar results have been found with homosexual females (the respond to female pheromones like their male counterparts and unlike their heterosexual female counterparts).


As far as genetics go, here's the frequency of homosexuality in people with a close relative who is gay:



And here's the location of the potential "gay gene":



The gene, like all genes, is not to be an all or nothing gene. Having it only conveys a certain percent chance of being gay, not a guarantee. Evidence suggests that it is inherited from the mother's side of the family, on the x chromosome she donates to her child.
An evolutionary explanation for this has been offered: while males with this gene tend to be gay, women with this gene tend to have more offspring. This is worth the evolutionary risk of producing a son who will not reproduce, because many daughters can be produced who will produce even more daughters.


Homosexuals also tend to perform in tests the way their opposite sex peers perform, as seen here:




Research shows that about 44% of gays and 54% of lesbians tend to be feminine or masculine, respectively. It should be understood that sexual orientation and gender identity are two separate issues. A woman may feel that she is actually a man and still be attracted to men. Similarly a woman may be attracted to other women but not feel that she should have been born male. They are two separate issues.

There is no evidence for the Freudian claim that a dominant mother and a weak father cause male homosexuality.

Overall the evidence shows that there is some potential influence of personal experience on sexuality, particularly in bisexuality, though it cannot be completely attributed to environment.

Most homosexuals report feeling "different" as early as 4 years of age, and they display a high level of gender non-conformity, or a breaking of gender roles.

An interesting note is that administering testosterone to homosexuals males does not make them heterosexual, it merely increases their sexual activity levels, as it would in heterosexual males. This suggests that changes in the brain occurred prenatally and cannot be reversed.


A common hypothesis suggests that homosexuality is caused by a woman having many sons, at which point she excretes too much testosterone, over-masculinizing the baby, because many gay men have significantly more older brothers than do heterosexual men. this makes sense because many homosexuals tend to exhibit characteristics of higher testosterone levels, such as larger genitalia, left-handedness, and longer ring fingers. This runs into a problem as males who have CAH (a disorder which produces excess testosterone in-utero) tend not to be gay, and there's no reason why a woman should produce more testosterone after successive male births.
A better suggestion is that the mother produces an antibody which prevents masculinization of the brain. This excess testosterone may not be the cause of homosexuality as much as a coincidence, that when the baby's brain is being demasculinized by the mother's antibodies the baby's body tries to compensate by producing excess testosterone. This makes the brain remain demasculinized but the body over-masculinized.
Some have hypothesized that the number of older brothers is an environmental influence, not a hormonal one, but this was discounted when it was shown that having many older brothers who are not genetically related has no effect on homosexuality.


Female homosexuality has been far less researched.

Sources:
Dr. G's lectures in biopsychology
Brain & Behavior: An Introduction to Biopsychology (2009). Second edition.

Psychology Stuff: Split Brain

For epilepsy patients who do not respond to medication and are having severe seizures, a split brain operation is used as a last resort to contain the damage.
The corpus callosum, a bundle of neurons which connects the right and left hemisphere, is cut, meaning that the electrical overload causing the seizures cannot cross into the other hemisphere. Unfortunately, this means no other information can cross over either.



Vision works like this:

(I rock at microsoft paint =p )

What you see here is an apple in the person's right visual field, and a banana in their left visual field. As you more than likely know, things in the brain are flipped, so that the right hemisphere controls the left side. Similarly, in the eyes, the left visual field in both eyes goes to the right hemisphere to be processed, and the right visual filed of both eyes goes to the left hemisphere, which leads to the right hemisphere processing the banana and the left processing the apple in this picture. (it is NOT the entire right eye going to the left side and vice versa. this is critical.)

Also, recall that the left hemisphere controls language.

As you can see here, this means the banana in the person's left visual field is processed solely in the right hemisphere. If the corpus callosum were cut, the information from the left visual field in the left eye, and from the right visual field in the right eye, would never get to cross over to the proper hemisphere and get processed. This is not a problem, because the information from the left and right visual fields of the other eye do still make it to the occipital lobe as they do not need to cross over. however, since language is controlled in the left hemisphere, information processed in the right occipital lobe would never make it to the left hemisphere to be turned into a word.

This means that a patient with a cut corpus callosum would see the banana and say they do not know what it is (and they're not lying). however, their right hemisphere does know what it is, it just can't put it into words. This means that if you hold up a poster board with a series of pictures, and you allow them to reach out their left hand (controlled by the right hemisphere) and point to one of a series of pictures, they will point to the picture of the banana. Or, if you let them reach their left hand into a bag and feel around amongst different fruits, they'll pull out a banana, all the while professing that they don't know what it is. Their right side knows what they are looking at, and can pick it out from among other fruits, but their left side doesn't know, because the processed information that says "banana" never reached the left hemisphere to be turned into speech.

Similarly, if they turn their head enough to put the banana into their right visual field, meaning the information will be sent to the left hemisphere as well, they will immediately blurt out "banana!"

For all intents and purposes, they have two distinct minds, which cannot communicate. They are two people in one body.

Is that not the coolest thing you've ever heard ever?

Psychology Stuff: Blind Sight

blind sight

coolest. thing. EVER.

Background you need to know:

The optic nerve leaves the eye and enters the brain though a hole in the back of the eye socket. In the brain it diverges. Part of it goes to the LGN (lateral geniculate nucleus) of the thalamus, and into area 17 of the striate cortex (occipital lobe). The other part goes to the superior colliculi in the mid brain. It's also known as the optic tectum. Frogs have an optic tectum, but no occipital lobe of course, so they famously have "frog vision." They can see five different things: motion, borders, and three other things I can't remember (I'll fill in these parts where I forgot if I ever remember to bring my notebook to the computer lab).

Now that you know that:

If area 17 is damaged, but your eyes and optic nerve and brain stem are still in tact, you will tell me that you cannot see. However, if I throw something at you, you'll duck out of the way. When I ask you why you did that, you have no idea.

This is because your optic tectum is still functioning, so you have frog vision, but it's completely unconscious. You have no idea that you're seeing.

The same thing can happen with hearing. Hearing goes to the MGN and then to many places but mostly the auditory cortex. It also goes to the inferior colliculi in the brain stem.

People with a damaged auditory cortex will tell you they can't hear, but they still jump if you make a loud noise, and they have no idea why. They essentially have frog hearing. They can hear, but not consciously.

How fucking cool is that?!?!!?