OK, have you got your head around ‘Blindsight’ yet?  I hope you have ‘cos I’ve found something that takes it to the next level.

Check this picture out, try and work out what your seeing and then read on and find out the incredible facts about what you are seeing here.

This is a brain scan, taken early last year, of a 44 year old French civil servant man with NO BRAIN.  This man was, apparently, having a normal life, working in the civil service and up until he was 44 had no idea that he lacked 80-90% of his brain.

I once heard Tad James, a famous NLP Master Trainer, discuss a very similar story to this one where an English doctor lived without a brain since childhood due to hydrocephalus (water on the brain), had an IQ of about 120, 2 kids and lived a normal life.

So how does this correspond to science which continues to search for the parts of the brain responsible for our behaviours and cognitive tasks?  Surely in a cases like these these patients should be in some sort of vegetative state?

Here’s the story (Reuters):

“Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of a 44-year-old man’s brain show a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle taking up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue, in this handout image released by French researchers July 19, 2007. The man with the unusually tiny brain has managed to live an entirely normal life as a married civil servant with two children despite his condition, according to the researchers.”

I must ask you a question now.  Have you got a brain?

If you answered yes, how do you know?  Have you ever seen it or are you just assuming you have one because you thought everyone had one?

And if you found out you didn’t have one, would it change you and how?

Brian

So I am getting back to work for a couple of days before taking a short break for New Year and thought I should get back to the blog and the promised ‘Wow’ posting (well it made me go ‘Wow’ anyway!)

Check this out (the video has no sound)

Wow, it’s a man narrowly avoiding a bin and a ream of A4 paper left lying on the floor.  Incredible, a rip-roaring, adrenaline ride of a clip!  Do you look at it differently when you discover the man in the clip is, medically speaking, 100% BLIND.  Seriously!

Apparently it is called ‘Blindsight’, the ability for a person who is not consciously aware of any visual input to react unconsciously to external input.  The clip was filmed at Harvard University and the man thought he had just walked down the corridor.  This just blows my mind!

I don’t know about you but watching this clip really made me think about what is truly possible.

I’ve put a couple of links at the bottom of the post so that you can read more about this and, as you do, ask yourself what unconscious resources, skills and attributes do other people see in you that you are not consciously aware of yet?

Happy New Year when it comes

Brian

NY TImes - Blind, Yet Seeing: The Brain’s Subconscious Visual Sense

BBC News - Blind man navigates maze