Basically, our brain is designed mainly to pick patterns out of signal noise. This is why we see faces in trees/rocks/colored moths.. because our brain realizes the pattern and diverts our attention to them. Our brain can be scanned to find out what we are looking at.. There is even a new video game controller that rests on your head and uses your thinking power to move a video game!
Information does not exist independently of the mind unless it is recorded, and even then, if the reader of the information has no knowledge of the script used to write it, now then they have no knowledge of the information written!
From a science article:
"Kamitani starts by getting someone to look at a selection of images made up of black and white squares on a 10 by 10 square grid, while having their brain scanned. Software then finds patterns in brain activity that correspond to certain pixels being blacked out. It uses this to record a signature pattern of brain activity for each pixel.The person then sits in the scanner and is shown fresh patterns. Another piece of software then matches these against the list to reconstruct the pixels on a 10 by 10 grid.
The quality of images that were recreated is quite crude. However, the word "neuron" and several numbers and shapes that people were indeed being shown (see image, top right) could be observed in the reconstructed images. It is an important proof of principle, says Haynes.
As fMRI technology improves, Kamitani adds that an image could potentially be split into many more pixels, producing much higher quality images, and even colour images."
Try to explain the color blue to a blind person who has never seen color and then tell me thought exists independently of the brain! We use our senses and language (one of the greatest gifts from God himself) to put meaning (or a reference of a memory, much like a computer pointer) to thought. Without a way to record a thought, it is meaningless to anyone but you. Period.
If information was immaterial, according to what that article says, people would retain it even if they receive massive non-fatal head trauma.. right?