Posted on 12/12/2004 11:23:32 AM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
A COMPLETELY blind British man had been shown to possess an apparent "sixth sense" which let him recognise emotions on people's faces, British scientists said in research released today.
The 52-year-old was able to react to pictures of human faces showing emotions such as anger, happiness or fear, the researchers said.
The man, identified only as "patient X", has suffered two strokes which damaged the brain areas that process visual signals, leaving him completely blind.
However his eyes and optic nerves are intact, and brain scans showed that he appeared to somehow use a part of the brain not usually used for sight to process visual signals linked to some emotions.
When researchers from the University of Wales showed the man images of shapes such as circles and squares, he could only guess what they were, and had a similar lack of success determining the gender of emotionless male and female faces.
But when presented with angry or happy human faces, his accuracy improved to 59 per cent, significantly better than what would be expected by random chance, with similar results for distinguishing between sad and happy or fearful and happy faces.
He was unable, however, to tell apart images of animals which appeared either threatening or non-threatening.
Brain scans showed that when the man looked at faces expressing emotion, it activated a part of his brain called the right amygdala, which is known to respond to non-verbal emotional signs.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, suggested the man was able to process information gathered by his eyes in a different part of the brain from the visual centre.
"This discovery is... interesting for behavioural scientists as the right amygdala has been associated with subliminal processing of emotional stimuli in clinically healthy individuals," said Dr Alan Pegna, who led the study.
"What patient X has assisted us in establishing is that this area undoubtedly processes visual facial signals connected with all types of emotional facial expressions."
God's creation is wonderful, is it not?
I can say something before an audience and tell if what I said went over or not without looking at the audience. Actually, it's in the more extreme situations, but you can feel the emotional feedback,.... or can't you?
The sound. Breathing patterns of the group.
"My-Spider-Sense-is-Tingling" Ping. :)
Quite possibly.
We're putting on a Christmas show now. I am in the pit where I can't see the audience. The music leaves the audience gasping sometimes, you can hear their smiles. Or groaning in wordless perplexity, depending.
This has nothing to do with the paranormal. It's well known that the optic nerves are connected to parts of the brain other than the visual cortex. There's also a phenomena called blind sight that's been well studied.
That's what I meant, but you said it so much better.
This wouldn't be paranormal since we now know what part of the brain receives and processes the information.
Anything we can prove Randy could say is normal.
> ... when the man looked at ...
Typical clumsy MSM reporting. I take this to mean that
the subject's eyes were open and "looking" at the test
articles. No reason to suspect telepathy here.
> ... Great Randy (magician) is offering $1 million
> reward for provable evidence of paranormal ability.
Sounds like this is not paranorm. It's just a degraded
visual state wherein the person isn't consciously
aware that they still have some residual capability.
If this person can do this, chances are we all can, but
this "blind" visual processing is lost in the noise of
visible imagery in the unimpaired. And if we can all do
it, it's just "undiscovered", and not "para".
Not really any better. I am oriented to the effect of sound, being in a music production at the moment. Whether there is some other communication than the traditional physical I can't say. Could be.
I remeber reading once, that there is a theory that vision is not just a passive thing. Meaning that our eyes don't just "receive", they also transmit. This theory came about because there seems to be a human sense that enables people to know when someone is looking at them. Apparently, this has been documented in scientific experiments but there is no understanding how this is happening.
I remeber reading once, that there is a theory that vision is not just a passive thing. Meaning that our eyes don't just "receive", they also transmit. This theory came about because there seems to be a human sense that enables people to know when someone is looking at them. Apparently, this has been documented in scientific experiments but there is no understanding how this is happening.
this is really an example of sloppy reporting--trying to turn a normal physiological process into something almost paranormal.
he is clearly not completely "blind" in the regular sense of the word. the information is going through his eyes and optic nerve to his brain.
he can't recognize circles and other things, which means a defect in cognitive processing of information.
i would be curious to know what else he can actually see (as opposed to recognize and label).
The Evil Eye
exactly. He may not be visually aware of it, but his brain is still getting this information through his intact optical nerves.
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