Blind eyesight - The strangest state of awareness

Some visually impaired people have the ability to see things not by eyes but by a strange sense in the subconscious mind of the human mind.

The ophthalmologist Michael Sanders, who works at London National Hospital, discovered what changed previous insights into people's perceptions , the BBC reported.

When he examined Daniel, a visually impaired patient with a visual cortex, also known as a severely damaged V1 region after brain surgery, Dr. Sanders suddenly noticed that the patient was able to accurately grasp. objects that he doesn't see. It seems that there is another form of vision, auxiliary, to guide the patient's actions that he is completely unaware of.

Trials were conducted in collaboration with psychologists Elizabeth Warrington and Lawrence Weiskrantz, who confirmed Dr. Sanders' hunch was valid. Surprisingly, the patient always insisted that he could not see anything that passed all the tests with high accuracy, absolutely not by accident.

Daniel's eyes were still healthy, unscathed, even though he could not see them due to the damage to the visual cortex. Chances are, these eyes are always watching the world and transmitting unconscious information into Daniel's mind.

In a scientific report published in 1974, Weiskrantz coined the term "blindsight" to describe this fragile state of consciousness.

"Some people are skeptical, of course, but it still exists and becomes an accepted phenomenon , " Weiskrantz said. A few decades later, this state became the premise in finding solutions to big problems that are still controversial about the human mind.

Visually impaired people seem to have a third eye inside their minds.(Artwork: Polyglottutor).

Research on blind eyesight

Studies of vision so far suggest that visual information travels from the eyes through the hippocampus, a transfer station above the brain stem, and then to the V1 located behind the head. There, information is packed into scenes containing colors, materials, three-dimensional space, forming visual awareness.

People with visual impairments due to V1 are hurt but their eyes are still healthy, helping the brain collect the visual cues around it, to guide the behavior of the patient, such as helping the person to grasp objects or move around exactly, even though the patient is unaware and still thinks that he is blind.

"Studying cases of blind patients opens a new perspective on the normally invisible parts of the brain, in other words, the overview of the functions of the brain is more difficult to observe, than more often silent , " said Marco Tamietto at the Dutch Tilburg University.

Many innovative ways of experimenting have been carried out by scientists from all over the world to find the cause of blind vision.Patients with blind eyesight have the ability to perceive unconscious vision , especially in the role of recognizing the emotions and mood of the powder. Patients who lose this normal vision can correctly guess which face is happy or sad, angry or amazed, and they even imitate those expressions unconsciously.

"Even if there is no recognition of any changes in the level of awareness, there is clearly a change in attitude, they express emotions at the same time as the images that appear in the mind , " Tamietto remarked.

Moreover, in addition to the ability to reflect emotions, these patients can feel when those emotions affect body gestures, such as the muscles of the face shrinking, the pupils dilate to react. again. If fully trained to pay attention to the reactions of the body, the patient can be aware of the phenomena in the surrounding world, aware of the dangers to prevent.

In 2008, Tamietto and Weiskrantz conducted a somewhat malignant test of Daniel, hiding the guide for Daniel's blind man, letting him pass through the hallway displaying messy furnishings.

"Even though he always said that he could not see anything, he still quickly walked through the hallway, avoiding all obstacles in the first try , " Tamietto said.

Most importantly, after the experiment, Daniel claimed that not only did he not see anything, but he did not understand why he could move along the corridor without bumping into furniture. Daniel insisted that he merely walked straight down the hall, according to Tamietto's Beatrice de Gelder in the Netherlands, that he had no way to describe or explain his own activities.

Christopher Allen of Cardiff University thinks blind vision provides a clue to conscious study, because there is a coexistence of conscious and unconscious visual awareness. In the process of finding something similar to consciousness but without a specific quality but only subjective experiences, the participants of the test still have the ability to comprehend despite the lack of visual awareness.

Try the feeling of "blind eyesight"

Zealous wants to experience the feeling of visualization, reporter David Robson himself, author of this article, participated in a brain stimulation experiment, separating the activity of different brain regions, trying to bring The moments are like those with blind eyesight in healthy people. The experiment was conducted at Dr. Christopher Allen's lab at Cardiff University, UK.

Using a technique called "transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), using a strong electromagnetic field that controls the activity of neurons, simulates the same behavioral capacity of patients with blind eyesight.

"A disk magnet is placed behind my head in the position of the visual cortex, the magnetic field begins to operate in short intervals, gradually increasing in intensity. At first, it feels like patting the skin, then I noticed a dark line passing through the center of my vision, like what you see when you turn off the old TV screen, even though it happens quite quickly, I still feel a bit shocked, for a while After getting acquainted , " Robson describes the testing process.

"The image in the test is the arrows that light up on the screen, my job is to point the arrow left or right. The appearance of the image sometimes syncs with the TMS signal causes blindness. For the time being, I hardly see anything, mostly guessing. However, at the end of the experiment, the results show that higher accuracy must be a random judgment. state with blind eyesight ".

Through experiments like TMS, the researchers obtained evidence that visual information traverses the hypothalamus above the brain stem, instead of bringing it to V1, which has circled through V1, to the center of the brain. where information is handled unconsciously in the brain region involving emotional processing and movement.

By unconsciously exploring the visually impaired, scientists can learn the mystery of the human subconscious.(Photo: Istock).

With normal vision, the image on the retina will initially be inserted into neurons in the main visual cortex, located behind the skull. The visual cortex is as important as the center of coordination, mixing information and coming from many cortical regions, creating visual awareness in the brain.

The researchers explain the problem of blind eyesight as a side walk of information in damaged cortical regions. According to some brain-imaging studies, when the main visual cortex is damaged, some visual information can take alternative routes. It reaches the motor centers in the brain without going through the cortical regions associated with memory or consciousness.

These experiences also reveal other clues about the capacity of the unconscious mind . Like puppets controlled by master artists, with audiences, it seems that the puppet has full control over the operation, but the puppet itself has no idea what actions are being taken. . Can see patients with blind eyesight led, avoiding obstacles thanks to the unconscious mind, like the artist who controls the puppet.

So how many decisions have been made without the control of awareness, even if the illusion is full of control? And if the mind is no longer necessary for the role of human activity, what purpose does it exist? Why should light up that vivid inner life if it can be unconsciously simple like "life"?

In the past, many scientists believed that consciousness was associated with all human activities, tightly entwined with tangled connections, and that it was completely impossible to disassemble and separate in the jumble of mind. That position, clues related to cognitive senses, clues related to emotions, to the existence of instincts and life experiences. Today neuroscientists discover that the human sensory system is closely interconnected, the areas of the brain responsible for controlling the senses spread throughout the brain, being able to act and compensate. cover each other.

Tamietto thinks that awareness does not play an important role when people have to make decisions, which the brain has made decisions before - in many ways, and in many situations. Juha Silvanto at Westminster University shares the same opinion.

"Consciousness is just a combination of all input information, in fact, the new subconscious can orient behavior, lead the complex development of output despite the presence of awareness" , Silvanto to speak.

Some philosophers even argue that humans exist as " living beings " under the action of unconscious impulses. This raises doubts about the nature and purpose of consciousness according to the still-accepted assumptions. After all, creatures with a rich inner life like humans, certain consciousness must have some role.

Robert Kentridge of Durham University has evidence that there is a connection between consciousness and focused attention . Experiments with Kentridge's blind vision patients show that it seems paradoxical: they are not aware of what is in their blind spot, but can focus their attention at there. In other words, the research object is really focused but cannot be aware of exactly what is involved.

It is clear that the participants did not see anything, but the judgment because of his subconscious seemed to work faster than the perception. Instead of acting as a ray of light to increase awareness, consciousness may have evolved to enhance memory, pooling all the different information into a cohesive picture to make it easier to remember.

"You need to encode all that is happening around into a single set," Kentridge said.

All of these treatises are just a few clues that can give solutions to the mysteries of the human mind. By studying the unconscious mind of patients with blind eyesight, a new direction can be opened, finding a way out of the complex labyrinth of the field of human mind research.