6 ms·

Blind Man Sees With Subconscious Eye

45 points by ksvs 18y ago

rokhayakebe 18y ago
Interesting finding. It truly hurts me to know that even if I lived another 80years, I will most likely not witness the most interesting discoveries about the mind, consciousness, the human psyche and all related subjects. If I could trick Time.
- inklesspen 18y ago
  Why not sign up for cryonics? It's not exactly what you wanted, but if and when it works and you're revived, you'll have plenty of time to catch up on what's been discovered.
ChaitanyaSai 18y ago
Subconscious eye, while not technically wrong I guess, is not the mystic qualia some might think of. This phenomenon is called Blindsight (also mentioned in the article) and not that rare. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight
- herdrick 18y ago
  And isn't it even more striking that he had no idea that he was carefully twisting and sidestepping? This must be closely related to the quintessential stroke symptom: one closed eye that the victim claims is open. I guess this all comes under the category of "things the stroke victim does without realizing it."
swombat 18y ago
Pretty awesome, but one part of it stood out and jarred - perhaps because of my subconscious sense of language. "He never touched any of it. We were like totally amazed," How old are these scientists? 12?
- jcl 18y ago
  English is not their native language. Acceptable use patterns may be different in the Netherlands.
  - gruseom 18y ago
    Oh come on. The "use pattern" here is obvious, and somehow I doubt there's a linguistics thesis coming on the great Holland - Southern California migration. Edit: besides, the Dutch (especially younger ones) tend to speak English at practically native speaker level. The cited example may even be an example of that: if you can sound dumb in the same way that a native speaker would, your English is obviously very good :)
    - jcl 18y ago
      The cited example shows a neuroscientist talking like an American teenager. As this is probably not intentional, the most likely explanation is a cultural disconnect. If anything, it's a counterexample of extreme fluency, since a native speaker in her position wouldn't intentionally say that.
      - jd 18y ago
        It's just a slip of the tongue. When you pick up idiom from the television and exchange students it's easy to say something that's like totally retarded. She was probably just nervous and didn't know what to say. So she said the first thing that came to mind...
    - jeroen 18y ago
      the Dutch (especially younger ones) tend to speak English at practically native speaker level. Don't overestimate us. Dutch people tend to be able to communicate in more languages than their own and be prepared to do so when encountering foreigners, but fluency in English is not widespread.
petercooper 18y ago
Many/most blind people also have their circadian rhythms regulated by light taken in by the eye - there are cells that respond to light in a non visual way.
- a-priori 18y ago
  That's definitely true for many (not sure about "most") of the blind, but it depends on the source of their blindness. Circadian rhythms are maintained by the Suprachiasmatic nucleus (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gray773.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gray773.png; the SCN is in the dark region below the chiasma). If light/dark information reaches this structure, then circadian cycles will be maintained. Remember also that most of the blind still perceive some visual information. They still see light and dark, or large shapes. Mind you, this is a completely different phenomenon from the blindsight that this article is about.
jwesley 18y ago
Interesting, but I was hoping this story would deal more with psychic abilities. Headline should read: "Brain-Damaged Man Doesn't Know He Can See" Journalists, always over promising...
mapleoin 18y ago
so this is sort of how Paul Atreides could see?
- dmoney 18y ago
  Muad'Dib saw through prescience applied to the present.
twopoint718 18y ago
If you want to read about many of these kinds of cases, I would suggest "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett. In light of that book this kind of thing is not that surprising (though still very interesting). The book highlights many examples that show that being consciously aware of something is not the be all and end all of the brain's function. There is no central Cartesian theater where the "I" watches the world through the eyes.
- matthewhuebert 18y ago
  I'd also suggest books by Oliver Sacks, like "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" and "An Anthropologist from Mars". He writes stories about people with all kinds of brain injuries/defects. I find his writing engaging and very educational.
Allocator2008 18y ago
I think this is great confirmation of Dan Dennett's "becoming famous" model of consciousness, that various "threads", much like program threads, are happening and competing all of the time in the brain, and the ones that "become famous", i.e. a thread that can be seen or accessed by broad areas of the brain, is what is consciousness, i.e., a famous thread does not correspond to consciousness, but rather is consciousness. In this case, the thread of the visual stimuli became only famous enough to control the subjects feet and so forth to help him avoid the obstacles, but did not become sufficiently famous to be recorded or reported by the subject as a "conscious experience". This is because the visual stimuli did get passed to the extrastriate visual cortical areas but not to the primary visual cortex. So this perfectly fits Dennett's model: a signal becomes famous enough to control muscles, but, because of injury, does not become so famous (or so globalized a thread, in programming terms) that the subject is able to report an experience of it. For my money, qualia does not exist. It is a remnant of Cartesian dualism that has no place in the 21st century. Here the subject did not "miss out" on some hocus pocus qualia, rather, the visual stimuli simply did not become famous enough to be able to be reported by him, but, it did become famous enough for him to be able to avoid the objects in his visual path. Dennet 1; Dualist Philosophers 0 :-)
huhtenberg 18y ago
"We were like totally amazed says de Gelder" ... and then I suspect she added "but lulz aside I was like wtf, dude ?" but that got edited out.
gojomo 18y ago
Remember Sammy Jankis? Leonard: "I never said that Sammy was faking. Just that his problem was mental, not physical."
smanek 18y ago
Reminds me a lot of the split brain phenomena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain). "Split-brain patients may sometimes confabulate a rational account of their behavior, if the true motivations cannot be reported since they may depend on processing in the linguistically inaccessible right side of the brain." For example, when they are shown a picture of a door in their left visual visual field, they will get up and walk towards the door. When asked why, they will always have an unrelated reason (e.g., to get a glass of water), and are unaware of the visual cue.

45 points by ksvs 18y ago

Interesting finding. It truly hurts me to know that even if I lived another 80years, I will most likely not witness the most interesting discoveries about the mind, consciousness, the human psyche and all related subjects. If I could trick Time.

inklesspen 18y ago
Why not sign up for cryonics? It's not exactly what you wanted, but if and when it works and you're revived, you'll have plenty of time to catch up on what's been discovered.

ChaitanyaSai 18y ago

Subconscious eye, while not technically wrong I guess, is not the mystic qualia some might think of. This phenomenon is called Blindsight (also mentioned in the article) and not that rare. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight

herdrick 18y ago
And isn't it even more striking that he had no idea that he was carefully twisting and sidestepping? This must be closely related to the quintessential stroke symptom: one closed eye that the victim claims is open. I guess this all comes under the category of "things the stroke victim does without realizing it."

swombat 18y ago

Pretty awesome, but one part of it stood out and jarred - perhaps because of my subconscious sense of language. "He never touched any of it. We were like totally amazed," How old are these scientists? 12?

jcl 18y ago
English is not their native language. Acceptable use patterns may be different in the Netherlands.
- gruseom 18y ago
  Oh come on. The "use pattern" here is obvious, and somehow I doubt there's a linguistics thesis coming on the great Holland - Southern California migration. Edit: besides, the Dutch (especially younger ones) tend to speak English at practically native speaker level. The cited example may even be an example of that: if you can sound dumb in the same way that a native speaker would, your English is obviously very good :)
  - jcl 18y ago
    The cited example shows a neuroscientist talking like an American teenager. As this is probably not intentional, the most likely explanation is a cultural disconnect. If anything, it's a counterexample of extreme fluency, since a native speaker in her position wouldn't intentionally say that.
    - jd 18y ago
      It's just a slip of the tongue. When you pick up idiom from the television and exchange students it's easy to say something that's like totally retarded. She was probably just nervous and didn't know what to say. So she said the first thing that came to mind...
  - jeroen 18y ago
    the Dutch (especially younger ones) tend to speak English at practically native speaker level. Don't overestimate us. Dutch people tend to be able to communicate in more languages than their own and be prepared to do so when encountering foreigners, but fluency in English is not widespread.

petercooper 18y ago

Many/most blind people also have their circadian rhythms regulated by light taken in by the eye - there are cells that respond to light in a non visual way.

a-priori 18y ago
That's definitely true for many (not sure about "most") of the blind, but it depends on the source of their blindness. Circadian rhythms are maintained by the Suprachiasmatic nucleus (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gray773.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gray773.png; the SCN is in the dark region below the chiasma). If light/dark information reaches this structure, then circadian cycles will be maintained. Remember also that most of the blind still perceive some visual information. They still see light and dark, or large shapes. Mind you, this is a completely different phenomenon from the blindsight that this article is about.

jwesley 18y ago

Interesting, but I was hoping this story would deal more with psychic abilities. Headline should read: "Brain-Damaged Man Doesn't Know He Can See" Journalists, always over promising...

mapleoin 18y ago

so this is sort of how Paul Atreides could see?

dmoney 18y ago
Muad'Dib saw through prescience applied to the present.

twopoint718 18y ago

If you want to read about many of these kinds of cases, I would suggest "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett. In light of that book this kind of thing is not that surprising (though still very interesting). The book highlights many examples that show that being consciously aware of something is not the be all and end all of the brain's function. There is no central Cartesian theater where the "I" watches the world through the eyes.

matthewhuebert 18y ago
I'd also suggest books by Oliver Sacks, like "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" and "An Anthropologist from Mars". He writes stories about people with all kinds of brain injuries/defects. I find his writing engaging and very educational.

Allocator2008 18y ago

I think this is great confirmation of Dan Dennett's "becoming famous" model of consciousness, that various "threads", much like program threads, are happening and competing all of the time in the brain, and the ones that "become famous", i.e. a thread that can be seen or accessed by broad areas of the brain, is what is consciousness, i.e., a famous thread does not correspond to consciousness, but rather is consciousness. In this case, the thread of the visual stimuli became only famous enough to control the subjects feet and so forth to help him avoid the obstacles, but did not become sufficiently famous to be recorded or reported by the subject as a "conscious experience". This is because the visual stimuli did get passed to the extrastriate visual cortical areas but not to the primary visual cortex. So this perfectly fits Dennett's model: a signal becomes famous enough to control muscles, but, because of injury, does not become so famous (or so globalized a thread, in programming terms) that the subject is able to report an experience of it. For my money, qualia does not exist. It is a remnant of Cartesian dualism that has no place in the 21st century. Here the subject did not "miss out" on some hocus pocus qualia, rather, the visual stimuli simply did not become famous enough to be able to be reported by him, but, it did become famous enough for him to be able to avoid the objects in his visual path. Dennet 1; Dualist Philosophers 0 :-)

huhtenberg 18y ago

"We were like totally amazed says de Gelder" ... and then I suspect she added "but lulz aside I was like wtf, dude ?" but that got edited out.

gojomo 18y ago

Remember Sammy Jankis? Leonard: "I never said that Sammy was faking. Just that his problem was mental, not physical."

smanek 18y ago

Reminds me a lot of the split brain phenomena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain). "Split-brain patients may sometimes confabulate a rational account of their behavior, if the true motivations cannot be reported since they may depend on processing in the linguistically inaccessible right side of the brain." For example, when they are shown a picture of a door in their left visual visual field, they will get up and walk towards the door. When asked why, they will always have an unrelated reason (e.g., to get a glass of water), and are unaware of the visual cue.