Attentive but unaware - Conscious Perception Has Little to Do With Primary Visual Cortex

vital points in this article!

Never thought I'd see the phrase "primary visual cortex" on this web site. What, did you take a wrong turn whilst looking for the Journal of Neurophysiology?

I studied this stuff and there's a good bit of non-aware stuff going on in V1 I think they call it. A lot of the visual illusions like Mach Bands happen there. Also peripheral vision is pretty involuntary: it's hard NOT to look at motion or blinking.

There's motion aftereffect, completely outside any kind of conscious control. And the crazy stuff with red-green equiluminant drifting gratings that stop drifting.

Finally V1 of cats is remarkably similar to ours. So sure cats may have some awareness but a homunculus? More like a felinculus I guess. Ha ha!

Thanks for bringing a touch of class to the neigborhood pub.

very nice from you :D
just surfacing some things which shifted my thinking

How did they shift your thinking?

For me, studying vision made me realize that we see the world through a mechanism. This mechanism has properties and so we are not seeing the world exactly as it is, but rather altered by the properties of the mechanism. For me, that was a deep realization.

I still recall one night driving home late from school, around midnight, and see the streetlights reflecting off cars. And thinking, these cars are cold lifeless lumps of metal, yet the light and the reflections are beautiful to me.