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Blind, Yet Seeing: The Brain’s Subconscious Visual Sense

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Adsos Letter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 02:42 AM
Original message
Blind, Yet Seeing: The Brain’s Subconscious Visual Sense
Source: NY Times

The man, a doctor left blind by two successive strokes, refused to take part in the experiment. He could not see anything, he said, and had no interest in navigating an obstacle course — a cluttered hallway — for the benefit of science. Why bother?

When he finally tried it, though, something remarkable happened. He zigzagged down the hall, sidestepping a garbage can, a tripod, a stack of paper and several boxes as if he could see everything clearly. A researcher shadowed him in case he stumbled.

“You just had to see it to believe it,” said Beatrice de Gelder, a neuroscientist at Harvard and Tilburg University in the Netherlands, who with an international team of brain researchers reported on the patient on Monday in the journal Current Biology. A video is online at www.beatricedegelder.com/books.html.

The study, which included extensive brain imaging, is the most dramatic demonstration to date of so-called blindsight, the native ability to sense things using the brain’s primitive, subcortical — and entirely subconscious — visual system.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23blin.html?ref=health



A long but interesting article.
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emlev Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 03:12 AM
Response to Original message
1. Either the link doesn't work or I'm not using my subcon. visual sense
Edited on Tue Dec-23-08 03:14 AM by emlev
but whatever the cause, I'm not seein' it. The first link, that is.

Try this link.
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Acadia Blue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 10:25 AM
Response to Reply #1
8. It worked on my cmputer...
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Hekate Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 04:37 AM
Response to Original message
2. Fascinating. Have you read "My Stroke of Insight"? I'm listening to it on CD just now...
A doctor -- a neural anatomist -- experienced a stroke at about age 37. Her story is similarly amazing.

Hekate


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lostnotforgotten Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 06:46 AM
Response to Reply #2
5. Jill Bolte Taylor - www.mystrokeofinsight.com
eom
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Shardik Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 04:40 AM
Response to Original message
3. Amazing!
The link worked just fine for me.

We are a complex animal.
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truthisfreedom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 05:32 AM
Response to Original message
4. Parallel processing.
It's real.
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boobooday Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 07:02 AM
Response to Original message
6. Thanks for posting -- fascinating!
A similar study was described in "Phantoms in the Brain," an awesome book by an researcher whose name I can't spell.
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Bill McBlueState Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 09:39 AM
Response to Original message
7. Interesting
This applies to the case where one's eyes are working just fine, but the part of the brain that normally processes what the eyes see isn't working. The brain appears to have a backup mechanism that doesn't work very well, but still provides some capacity to interpret incoming photons.
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toopers Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 11:09 AM
Response to Original message
9. So is blindsight 20/20?
eom
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LiberalHeart Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 11:39 AM
Response to Original message
10. Yet, in the dark, I routinely bump into a table or the door jamb. 20/20 vision here.
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emlev Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 01:54 PM
Response to Original message
11. This reminds me of something I saw years ago on a TV mag show
The story, if I remember correctly, was about dementia and the brain. One of the people featured on it was someone who had no memory of the part of her (his? can't remember) life when she was blinded, and reportedly didn't believe she was blind. That was the conclusion, anyway, about this person who could not see but quite successfully behaved as though she could. This sheds new light on that info. Thanks for posting.
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LeftishBrit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 06:26 PM
Response to Original message
12. Fascinating
The condition of 'blindsight' has been known for some time (the classic book on the subject is Lawrence Weiskrantz' "Blindsight: A Case Study and Its Implications"); but this patient is unusual with regard to how well his 'blindsight' works and can be adapted to practical purposes.
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brentspeak Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 06:59 PM
Response to Original message
13. .
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marasinghe Donating Member (754 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-23-08 09:08 PM
Response to Original message
14. remember master po, grasshopper? -) (n/t)
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Delphinus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-24-08 06:42 PM
Response to Original message
15. Truly cool!
I love what I learn on this forum!

Thanks for posting.
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