{"id":233643,"date":"2026-03-19T07:05:51","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T12:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/human-vision-what-we-actually-see-and-dont-see-tells-us-a-lot-about-consciousness"},"modified":"2026-03-19T07:05:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T12:05:51","slug":"human-vision-what-we-actually-see-and-dont-see-tells-us-a-lot-about-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/human-vision-what-we-actually-see-and-dont-see-tells-us-a-lot-about-consciousness","title":{"rendered":"Human vision: what we actually see \u2014 and don\u2019t see \u2014 tells us a lot about consciousness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vJG698U2Mvo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Despite denying any conscious awareness of the bar, the participant could answer correctly at a level well above chance. The participant even showed evidence of being able to pay attention to the bar \u2013 they were faster to respond when an arrow (placed in a healthy area of their visual field) correctly indicated the location of the bar.<\/p>\n<p>The most popular interpretation (<a href=\"https:\/\/psycnet.apa.org\/buy\/2020-57499-001\">though not the only one<\/a>) is that people with blindsight can see these objects, but not see them consciously. They see what is there, but it all goes on unconsciously, below their awareness.<\/p>\n<p>The phenomenon of <a href=\"https:\/\/psycnet.apa.org\/record\/1998-07464-000\">inattentional blindness<\/a> seems to show you can see without the information crossing into your consciousness. Anyone can experience inattentional blindness. The phenomenon has been known about for a long time, but we can most easily get a handle on it by looking at a well-known experiment reported in 1999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite denying any conscious awareness of the bar, the participant could answer correctly at a level well above chance. The participant even showed evidence of being able to pay attention to the bar \u2013 they were faster to respond when an arrow (placed in a healthy area of their visual field) correctly indicated the location [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}