A new study suggests that your brain can see and process more information than you might think.

To come to this heady conclusion, scientists had to zap the brains of healthy volunteers (and rather brave ones, we might add) and temporarily shut down the part of the brain that processes visual information. For a fraction of a second, a pulse of energy called transcranial magnetic stimulation shut down each person’s visual cortex. That’s the part of the brain known to process what we see.

The Human Brain Researchers from Rice University came to this conclusion after testing volunteers who agreed to allow the scientists to temporarily shut down the part of their brain that processes visual information, or the primary visual cortex. During their flash of blindness, volunteers were staring at a computer screen and were shown a simple image.

When asked if they saw the picture, all of them said “no.” But when asked to guess at what they saw, whether it was a color or shape, the nine volunteers gave right answers almost three out of four times.

The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

I would suggest the images were in memory but not indexed.

how are the images indexed by the brain?

Neural, how do you describe sub-consciousness?

a simple definition of 'subconsciousness' would be "that which is below the level of consciousness yet may be brought into consciousness". There are alternative definitions though.

Yea, but how much information can be stored in it? Or does it even have storage abilities?

before we become conscious of various memories of our past they are in the subconscious (using the definition above).

Only memories? What about concepts or information that hasn't yet been screened by our consciouss?

are they sure its not just the superior colliculus- pulvinar nucleus pathway?

good point; probably sup.colliculus->pulvinar->extrastriate visual cortex, though the question of why shutting down V1 should result in blindness when information can easily bypass it remains to be explained.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxp54YsExZ4&feature=related

Actually, there is a lot that your "brain" sees but your mind is not aware of. Consciousness is just one corner of the mind. I don't mean this in a Freudian, psychoanalytic sense. Obviously we aren't consciously aware of the parts of our brains that regulate many basic bodily functions. It's also the case that there are many things that enter through our senses that we think we should be able to perceive, but we simply don't notice.

For instance, here' s a cool example.

Lol I don't know if anyone could possibly concentrate hard enough on the white team to miss that...

A very interesting Blindsight experiment!

I'd imagine that's what it was.



I have dial-up (so can't watch it), but I'm assuming that's the people tossing around balls, in white or black clothes, and a guy in a gorilla suit walks through? Heh, love that one. One of my professors in Cognitive Psych showed that one.

That study is actually an excellent example of why people shouldn't be talking on cell phones while driving (handheld OR speakerphone).