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The Space Between Our Ears by Michael Morgan, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20, ISBN 029782970X Reviewed by Simon Ings

FORM and colour, distance and depth, movement and rotation: we do not simply react to the complexities of the visual world, we consciously perceive them. Where does this “perception” take place? Is there a screen inside the brain, and a watcher, watching it? And another screen inside that watcher; and another, inside that? Worryingly, the answer seems to be yes.

Salomen Henschen discovered as early as 1893 that the occipital lobe contained a nervous “map” of the visual field. In 1964, Alan Cowey…