Blind man can 'see' emotions in others

[emad]

Times
By Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor



http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,166087,00.gif

A MAN who is blind can nonetheless recognise emotions in the faces of others.

The extraordinary finding proves that emotion is registered in a different part of the brain from normal vision and that in some circumstances even the totally blind can distinguish emotions in others.

The tests were done at the University of Wales in Bangor by a team led by Dr Alan Pegna, who studied a 52-year-old man who had lost his sight after two successive strokes had destroyed his visual cortices, the link between his eyes and the part of the brain involved in vision.

The man, who is not named in the team’s report in Nature Neuroscience, can see nothing. His world is dark and he cannot distinguish movement, colours, shapes or even the presence of a bright light. Recent research using brain scans has shown that the part of the brain involved in recognising emotion in the faces of others is the amygdala, a region quite distinct from the part involved in normal vision.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-1401849,00.html

[emad]

1. See also "How the brain recognises a face"

BBC
The brain goes through three separate stages to decide if it recognises a face, scientists claim.

A team from University College London says the first assesses a face's physical aspects.

The second decides if it is known or unknown. If it is a recognisable face, the third part puts a name to it.

The researchers say their study, published in Nature Neuroscience, could help those people with dementia who lose their ability to recognise faces.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4086319.stm

[tk2kewl]

2. Id like to hear "How the brain recognises a farce" /nt

:shrug:

[atommom]

6. ... and why Republicans can't! ;)

[phantom power]

3. I'm trying to imagine what this would be like.

You can't actually see anything, yet you are able to perceive the expressions on a persons face, if you are looking at them.

It's making my head hurt.

[sans qualia]

4. This is cool, but

it's not that new. From what I can tell from the article, it just looks like an instance of the well know (but still very interesting) phenomenon of blindsight, in which a person, having suffered damage to their thalamus (?), is blind in the sense of lacking visual qualia, but still able to "see" things unconsciously. For example, in one experiment, people with blindsight were presented with images of either vertical or horizontal lines. They swore up and down they couldn't see anything, but when asked to guess which way the lines were going, they got it right over 90% of the time.

[trotsky]

5. Sounds a lot like what we would expect from evolution.

A visual system built out of semi-redundant features, or layers. Very fascinating story.

[atommom]

7. The human brain really is fascinating.

It makes you wonder what other capabilities we have (and don't recognise).

[atommom]

8. Anyone remember the posts in GD a couple of weeks ago,

in which a number of people talked about having a feeling of foreboding about our future. I know there were at least two long threads on the subject. I wonder whether we're feeling the emotional response to some observations we've made on an unconscious level. If so, I wish my amygdala would just tell me what the hell is going on .... :shrug: