The Mysterious Mind’s Eye


For many years the gap between the mind and the brain has baffled scientists and they have often questioned the small distinction between seeing and not seeing. In research conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science, scientists wanted to discover how the images we see which are of no real existence can be consequently produced by certain physical activities within our brains. This being the first study of its kind, scientists believe the answer could lie in certain neural activity that is ignited within our brains.

The study, which has been published in the recent edition of Neuron, involved the investigation of a group of epileptic patients who had previously had electrodes inserted into their brains before surgery. They were then asked to complete several perception awareness tasks in which various different images were passed across a computer screen. The images were divided into two groups, “target” and “mask”; a target image such as a house, face, or rather a man-made object was passed across the screen before a “mask” image. The mask image was an insignificant image used simply to distract the patient; and these were presented at varied intervals following the viewing of the target image.

The electrodes within the volunteer’s brains then allowed the researchers to see just how they reacted to the production of the images by monitoring their neural activity. It was found that sometimes the patient would recognise the target image but would fail to do so other times. The recognition part of the image was found to stem from highly intense neural activity in the part of the brain that is responsible for recognising images such as houses and so on. However, when the mask image was shown to the patient too rapidly after the target image, the patient would fail to recognise it as the mask image “killed” the signals within the brain. Thus showing that the brain needs time to process images to initiate the conceptual awareness.

The study has been praised in helping scientists to begin to understand the vast gap between mind and brain and if more questions that stem from these investigations (e.g. Is the mechanism found in this study the only one involved in perception?) are answered then the results could lead to ground-breaking understandings and hopeful cures for various eye diseases.

21st January 2010

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