70 years after the death of the father of psychoanalysis, researchers claim that they were able to put their finger on the unconscious perception, and even characterize the brain activity behind it
When Sigmund Freud published his book "The Meaning of Dreams", he announced a sensational discovery about the structure of the human psyche: according to him, at the base of mental life, beneath the thin layer of awareness, there is a world full of unconscious thoughts, wishes and impulses. Freud claimed that complicated thought processes occur in a person without awakening his consciousness. But since they are not conscious, they cannot be identified directly, but only their existence can be inferred based on their effect on conscious thoughts - as in the familiar Freudian example: the dream.
Freud's concept of the unconscious created a cultural revolution and changed the way we perceive the human soul. But 70 years after the death of the father of psychoanalysis, the existence and essence of the unconscious are controversial topics among psychologists. Now, researchers from the Department of Psychology at Tel Aviv University claim that they have managed to put their finger on the unconscious perception, and even characterize the brain activity behind it.
The research, published in the scientific journal Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, is based on the doctoral thesis of Moti Selti, together with Dr. Dominic Lamy and Prof. Yair Bar Haim from Tel Aviv University. Like other cognitive psychologists, Selti emphasizes that the unconscious in which his research is concerned is not the same as the concept associated with Freud's theory. "We are not talking about the unconscious with traumas and impulses, but about unconscious perception. You walk around the world and pick up a lot of stimuli around you, but you are only aware of a small part of them."
The possibility of presenting sub-threshold messages that affect the receiver without him being aware of their existence was discovered about a century ago, and over the years has even given rise to various conspiracy theories. In recent years, research on unconscious absorption has expanded - such as the absorption of visual images presented for too short a period of time to be absorbed in the mind. For example, a study recently published by researchers from the Hebrew University claimed that covert exposure to the national flag unconsciously encourages voting for centrist parties.
In their new study, Salty and his partners sought to isolate the brain activity that occurs during conscious perception, and differentiate it from the activity that occurs during unconscious perception. To this end, they exposed the experimental participants to a visual image of a square appearing in an area on the computer screen, and identified the cases in which they saw the square without being aware of it.
In such situations, the subjects said they did not see any shape, but when asked to try to guess where the shape appeared, they succeeded in doing so in a significant number of cases. "Of the cases that the subject said he did not see, in 50% of the cases he still manages to guess," says Selti. "It shows that processing has taken place, but he is not aware."
While answering the questions, the subjects were connected to an EEG (electroencephalograph) device that measures the electrical activity in the brain. In this way, they tried to check at what stage awareness occurs. "What the results show is that awareness happens relatively late in perception, almost half a second after being exposed to a stimulus we become aware of it," says Salty. According to him, the findings imply that when we have a feeling that we wanted to perform a certain action, the feeling of desire sometimes comes after the action has already been performed. "On a philosophical level, it raises questions about desire. If you are aware of the stimulus at such a late stage, already after you have given a response, it raises questions about what desire actually is. On a personal level, it's disturbing."
17 תגובות
Subconscious mind consists of many stages
The subconscious mind is connected to a spiritual part that originates from the soul that is in the brain and is controlled by a spiritual force that comes from a living and existing divine light that wants to convey true information and humans do not have enough knowledge and desire to understand what it is to be a human being created by a living and existing God.
The desire was not the first time he was exposed to stimulation
Yigal C:
"Subconscious" actually appears in the title.
In the body of the article there are various expressions with "unconscious" (like "unconscious perception").
Apart from that - in the current context - in my opinion there is no difference between the two.
What do you think is the difference? (I intentionally said "in the current context" because in a general context - "unaware" also includes other things - ones that we have never even come across - for example - I am not aware of Clinton's activities at this exact moment).
beam:
The answers to all the questions you raised are in my response 7.
In general, I said there that the article appropriates results obtained in other studies and not in the described study.
The truth is that I have also encountered what is described in the article itself before.
The reason for all this is described in my opinion correctly in Aryeh Seter's response.
All this does not make the conclusions incorrect! All the conclusions proposed in the article were indeed backed up by studies and you can find links to information about some of these studies in response 7.
Friends, your comments are correct. Take into account the fact that the words are written by the university's public relations department, albeit in collaboration with the relevant faculty/department - but there are problems. The publicists are not exactly familiar with the material and the relevant department - everything seems clear and understandable to them, because they deal with the subject all the time and after their words have been published in the journal, it is difficult for them to enter the mind of an objective and critical reader and they miss the disruptions that the publicists are responsible for. We witness this over and over again in many publications of various departments and universities and also in other subjects outside academia, when the publicists produce press releases with flaws. The editors (like the editor of the science), cannot investigate and rewrite every message they receive and in most cases they publish it as language. The solution is for the publicist to be a cluster person in many areas, but this is difficult to achieve. We will therefore continue to review the materials presented to us by the publicists and this will be part of the fruitful discussion here on the site.
Friends,
Michael, the article uses the phrase "unconscious" and not "subconscious". I do assume that you meant the same thing, however there is a certain difference.
beam,
The meaning of the time difference is that, often, our reactions are carried out under the influence of parts of the brain that we are not aware of. The example of driving through a red light does not belong because it indicates a wrong reception of data in the brain (you thought the traffic light had changed) and not an action arising from the unconscious. Many of our decisions and reactions are derived from brain processes that we are not aware of, and moreover, that our consciousness does not have access to, yet they affect us. In an extreme illustration (according to Ada Lampert, for example), our consciousness is constantly busy justifying why we do things that were decided by the unconscious.
The use of EEG is intended to diagnose the moment when the brain performs an action in a certain area, and I assume that it is connected to the area considered to be the place of consciousness (or the corresponding part of it) and the activity in it testified to the "absorption" of the appearance of the square in consciousness.
My feeling is that whoever passed the news to the newspaper committed a sin in the research (perhaps because he did not understand it) or there is an attempt to announce something without revealing details. In any case, the whole news is rather obscure.
Oh and one more thing...
Such bombastic headlines are suitable for the Yediot newspaper, not for the Hedaan website...
It is important to have a strong factual connection between the title and the following writing……..
A. The fact that I saw a square and was aware that I saw the square only half a second later, still does not lead to the conclusion that I will do something and only then will I be aware of what I did.
There is a difference between sensory perception and internal processes of desire and emotion that lead to the decision to do something.
Although there are cases in which we react before we think or perhaps even contrary to what the "thought" tells us, for example in situations we define as an instinctive reaction, or reaction situations resulting from extreme stressful situations or as a result of an extreme emotional state, but it still depends on what type of action we talking.
Because half a second after I started doing something along the way I might already think it's a mistake and stop myself. (like starting a trip for example at a red light and stopping immediately). Although it is a different neural process, the example was just to illustrate the process.
B. It is not clear from the article how, by connecting the EEG, they understood that there was awareness?
After all, as it is presented in the article, they were not aware of the fact that they saw the square even during the phase of giving the answers, but simply "guessed" meaning that their answer was "guessed" but not yet conscious.
More so if we return to the conclusion of the study:
It is also not clear from the article how they managed to check the awareness stage?
So there are two options
1. The researchers drew an unacceptable conclusion
2. The research was not presented correctly here on the website (and then the question is asked, so what's the point) and there is a more likely chance that this is the correct answer.
And another possibility that I just became aware of is:
Maybe I missed something, i.e. I didn't understand what was written?!!?!
I would be happy if you "light up" my eyes even if more than half a second late
The BBC program Horizon did about this segment that the mind chooses before the mind knows it, episode.
The episode is called The Secret You. Watching the episode in the YouTube theaters closest to your home.
The issue has already been discussed here a lot and I don't have the strength to repeat what I said in other discussions, but:
Iris:
The information we know without being aware of it has no other name.
It is called "subconscious" and there is nothing wrong with using the word only if there are those who mistakenly attribute it only to what Freud meant. That's why the writer did well to use the word "subconscious" and it's also good that he explained that he was talking about something different from what Freud was talking about.
By the way - there is also a subconscious of the type that Freud talked about, so it is not possible that this claim of his was disproved as a whole (not shortly after it and not at all).
You are welcome to read the book "Brain Illusions" by the well-known neurophysiologist Ramachandran and argue with that.
You are also invited to look inside and try to give yourself an account of the mechanism by which the dream consciousness tells us all kinds of practical stories about why we can't pee right now - just so we don't pee in bed.
Eddie:
Did you really not notice that the article talks about an experiment that demonstrates a type of knowledge that not only precedes consciousness but never reaches it?
I find it appropriate to mention here again, for the umpteenth time, the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d35nFvb1Wh4&feature=channel_page
point:
I don't know how much neurology there was in Freud's day and it is clear that he did not understand that the mind cannot be studied through it (and in my opinion - if he had "understood" this he would have been mistaken).
white blood:
This study tries to appropriate the results of other studies.
He himself did not deal with the will at all.
Other studies show that there is an unconscious "will" that precedes the conscious will (and also action).
You can see it in the link I provided above and also in the following link:
http://davidrosenthal1.googlepages.com/libet.pdf
Nahum and:
I agree with you completely.
You wrote some of the things I meant when I said above that I don't feel like repeating everything.
Look for the Blue Brain Project
Can science describe emotions?
I think that in the end, as they discovered in quantum theory, that certain phenomena cannot be described with the help of modern science and that the observer affects the results of the experiment, we will reach the same conclusion about the way the human brain works.
Maybe in the future with the help of a quantum computer it will be possible to build the human brain...
There are two types of will and intention.
The almost absolute majority of all actions that humans do are quasi-automatic, and are not preceded by a conscious decision, conscious will or intention. This is a well-known fact and there is no place to expand on it here.
This does not negate the principle of free choice, since although man according to my words is like a "pre-programmed" robot, he chooses how to program himself, and with his hand to change his programming.
Thus, for example, I can learn martial arts that cause me, in the event that I am attacked, to automatically react strongly and severely injure and even kill the attacker. The injury or killing of the attacker is in such a case automatic and is not done out of will and intent. However, the programming that I programmed myself to do this, he is indeed aware of, and for which I have free choice and personal responsibility.
I didn't understand how it could be that the desire comes after the act, after all the intention precedes the action(?), somewhat puzzling
Iris, Freud was a neurologist and scientist in every way. He realized after many years of research that the mind cannot be understood through neurology and therefore he moved on to developing theories in the field of the mind regarding the nature of the mind, such theories cannot be scientific, and he was aware of this.
"What the results show is that awareness happens relatively late in perception, almost half a second after being exposed to a stimulus we become aware of it," says Salty.
- What is the novelty here? What did we not know until now that it takes time for us to form an awareness of Groy? This is a finding that was already measured in the eighties of the last century!
"According to him, the findings imply that when we have a feeling that we wanted to perform a certain action, the feeling of desire sometimes comes after the action has already been performed."
- This is also a well-known finding, and there are different scientific interpretations about it - much more than the revolutionary researchers ("we identified the brain activity of the subconscious") have to say.
I hope that the research is less trivial than it is portrayed, and that the arrogance of the researchers is only due to the bombast of journalists.
The title corresponds to YNET
The researchers explain that there is no connection to Freud's subconscious and talk about unconscious activity. It's a shame that precisely in presenting the discovery, the author of the article tries to confuse the readers in order to get some scoop that is unfounded after reading the full article.
The research psychologists are certainly not happy to be associated with the name of Freud who acted in anti-scientific ways and left us unfounded theories that waited very little until they were disproved.