Do you think you see everything within your field of vision? Normally yes. But now, after a new study carried out by
Institute Max Planck in Germania, ensures that the brain chooses the stimuli that will become conscious, we will no longer be so sure. We usually believe that all the stimuli encountered in our visual field are perceived without difficulty by a healthy receptive system, but nevertheless the trees in the first row do not allow us to appreciate the rest of the forest. Until now in the scientific field no one had asked the question: is it possible to train the ability to make objects conscious? Although it must be said that the subject is not entirely new, very curious phenomena relating to the brain and sight had already been reported previously, such is the case with intermittent attention and movement blindness. The researchers showed two different shapes to eight people participating in the experiment: a square and a diamond, one of which was masked. Participants had to identify the observed figures, the first of the figures was invisible to people at the start of the test but after five sessions they were able to identify the square and the dimante. The results show that there is no well-defined limit between the stimuli that can be perceived and those that we lose definitively, perhaps the images that simplify the best are precisely those of the two masked objects; one of the most classic is the image at the beginning of the article. We already know that, in some cases, there are images that we cannot see because we are socially conditioned to perceive a certain outline and give it a very specific meaning. Such is the case with the initial image in which most adults see a pair of lovers. However, younger children can only appreciate the dolphins. I have to admit that I had to put some effort into recognizing dolphins, so I'll make it easier for you in the next image.
However, in addition to social conditioning, the authors of this research ensure that our perceptual system has a reduced ability to process and make conscious the stimuli that reach us through the visual apparatus, and therefore, it is quite normal that many of the images are not perceived and so we need various exposures to be able to capture and raise awareness in addition to the first impact. In favor of this hypothesis, psychologists argue that on many occasions, not even by preparing people in advance about what they will see, can certain images be made aware. Only repeated exposure can rearrange the visual apparatus. This discovery is of vital importance since it offers possibilities hitherto unthinkable to those people who, due to damage to the primary visual cortex, have difficulty in recognizing objects. Now there remains only the question of determining which stimuli are most suitable for each deficit and the peculiarities of the patients.
