
Blind Man Sees With Subconscious Eye - ksvs
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98590831
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ChaitanyaSai
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>

~~~
herdrick
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."

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twopoint718
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.

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matthewhuebert
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.

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swombat
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?

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jcl
English is not their native language. Acceptable use patterns may be different
in the Netherlands.

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gruseom
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
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
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...

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petercooper
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.

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a-priori
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>; 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.

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smanek
Reminds me a lot of the split brain phenomena
(<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.

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jwesley
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...

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huhtenberg
" _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.

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mapleoin
so this is sort of how Paul Atreides could see?

~~~
dmoney
Muad'Dib saw through prescience applied to the present.

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gojomo
Remember Sammy Jankis?

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

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rokhayakebe
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
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.

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Allocator2008
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

:-)

