July 06, 2007

Subliminal Perception---Old Hat or is There Something New?


There it was again and even more starkly put! "Researchers have found the first physiological evidence that subliminal images do registers subconsciously. Brain scans showed that even though volunteers were not aware of the series of quickly flashed images their visual-processing centers activated in response to the picture. The study from University College London did not address whether subliminal images could influence thought or behavior."

This time it appeared in
Scientific American Mind, a relatively new spin off from Scientific American. A more complete PR blurb titled "Subliminal Advertising Leaves its Mark on the Brain" had come across my computer before. I read it quickly and considered putting it on the blog, since intuition may sometimes involve subliminal perception. It wasn't because I thought physiological evidence for subliminal perception was news. Rather it was for what appeared to be two almost contradictory reasons. It seemed an example of PR on overdrive and it provided an interesting summary of state of the art knowledge of subliminal perception.

I was under the impression that there was scads of evidence that subliminally presented images register on the brain. It seems to me that a full bibliography would take many pages, and that is probably an understatement. I’m not talking about subliminally presented pictures of popcorn at a movie theater increasing popcorn sales, nor flashing the RATS part of “Bureaucrats” in a separate frame in
a Republican attack ad affecting votes. To the best of my knowledge such things have not been shown. This does not necessarily mean they cannot occur. (Related effects have been shown. For example, well-established work by Zajonc shows that picture flashed subliminally can influence subsequent preferences. The devil, as usual, must be in the details.)

Support for subliminal perception comes from brain imaging studies as well as behavioral studies. For example, a landmark paper published in 1998 demonstrated that presenting subjects with subliminal pictures of faces with fearful expressions activates their amygdala, the part of the brain that registers fear (
Whalen et. al.) . A 2005 study went much further. It showed that threatening words that do not come to awareness nonetheless generate relatively long-lasting activity in the amygdala. Interestingly the amygdala did not begin to respond until about 800 milliseconds later (Naccache at al.). This delay makes sense when you think about it because words have to go through several levels of processing before their meaning is extracted.

Unconscious cognition has become a hot area of research. Researchers are interested in the topic for itself, and also because it is an approach to trying to understanding consciousness. To understand consciousness it helps to compare it to something. Often some kind of stimulus is presented that does not come to awareness ---for example because is flashed for too short a time. The brain activity is then compared to the brain activity when the stimulus is allowed to come to awareness. The difference is an indication of the neural activity associated with consciousness--- or the neural correlates of consciousness, as they are called.

It turns out that there are a number of ways to be sure visual images do not come to awareness---besides flashing them for too short a time. These techniques are called “masking.” In one technique a brief stimuli is presented and then an additional one is presented for roughly twice as long right afterwards. The second stimulus assures that the initial one does not come to consciousness. This is called backward masking. In another technique called the attention blink, attending to an initial conscious stimulus prevents another one presented from 200 to 800 milliseconds later from coming to consciousness. The University College of London experiment, by Bahrami et. al., used yet another technique. They presented faint pictures of tools to one eye and a continuous stream of high-contrast masks to the other eye, which suppresses conscious awareness of the tools.

This lab is very reputable, so I decided to read
the paper. I am delighted I did. It confirmed something very subtle about the role of attention in subliminal perception---something well worth contemplating.

The researchers presented the faint images of tools under two different conditions. In the first, subjects were engaged in a relatively easy task---picking out a specific letter, such as a “T” from a continuous visual display of letter. In the second they were engaged in a more difficult task requiring more focused concentration---picking out a letter of a specific color, say a blue T. With the easy but not the hard task, activity associated with the tools showed up on the primary visual cortex. This suggests that information impinging on the retina at least under these conditions is only forwarded to the part of the brain that registers visual experience when the demands on attention are relatively light.

Researchers used to think that subliminal perception was independent of attention. Not only can attentional load interfere with sensory information coming to consciousness (check this out), it can also interfere with it even being recorded by the brain. Indeed the title of the paper---which unfortunately was not mentioned in either PR blurb---is "Attentional Load Modulates Response of Human Visual Cortex to Invisible Stimuli." (Other experiments had suggested this but had not proved it conclusively.)

How might the effect work? We have at least a partial answer. The brain is densely interconnected both within its different regions and between them. This allows it to integrate incoming information from the environment with other information. Sensory signals from the retina go through a relay station, in the thalamus---called the LGN, or lateral geniculate nucleus---on their way to the primary visual cortex in the back of the brain. It turns out that roughly 80% of the LGN's input is from higher brain centers. So, when demands on attention are high, subliminal sensory input somehow can get stopped at the LGN and will not advance to the visual cortex.

With respect to intuition one might be tempted to conclude that subliminal information only registers in the brain proper when it is not otherwise engaged in a demanding task. But is this really a fair conclusion? Let’s change the situation a little bit. For example, say faint pictures of enchiladas are flashed to hungry subjects who love Mexican food or frothing glasses of beer to thirsty beer-loving subjects ---under the same two conditions. Or how about instead flashing a definitive pictorial clue to an engaging and difficult insight problem the subject was given the night before. I have a strong hunch that at least the first two of these high valance, or emotionally charged, stimuli would compete more effectively with the ongoing attentional load and at least register in the visual center in brain. The third is a bit more complex. Especially here, I can hardly wait to see what happens.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oi, achei teu blog pelo google tá bem interessante gostei desse post. Quando der dá uma passada pelo meu blog, é sobre camisetas personalizadas, mostra passo a passo como criar uma camiseta personalizada bem maneira. Se você quiser linkar meu blog no seu eu ficaria agradecido, até mais e sucesso. (If you speak English can see the version in English of the Camiseta Personalizada. If he will be possible add my blog in your blogroll I thankful, bye friend).

Anonymous said...

Interesting article. I'm sure most scientists have known goddamn well that subliminal images and messages do have an impact and DO affect your decisions. Have you heard the clip of George W. scoffing at the idea of subliminal messages ?? Check for it at Youtube, I am sure it
is in there.

Anonymous said...

way back when the first articles and books came out on subliminal advertising, I read them.

your subconscious sees, hears, everything. and it is in your brain. sometimes, many times, the subconscious and conscious minds meld information.

Unknown said...

A really fascinating article which backs up what we have long believed but, I for one, had never taken the time to delve into the scientific research on the impact of subliminal images and messages.

I do know, from experience, that even if someone is in an apparent coma, they can still hear and understand what one is saying at some deep level. This is one of the reasons that in most operating rooms today, physicians refrain from making negative comments because even under anesthesia, it is believed that patients can be influenced by the spoken word.

Anonymous said...

The Evidence So Far Has Been Behavioral, Not Physiological

That's what's new about this.

I did a large senior project on a related issue in college. It's remarkably hard to measure because of response variables, but in general it looks like like like some subliminal stimuli can be perceived.

Whether that has any far-reaching implications is another matter.

Anonymous said...

Brain imaging studies are certainly physiological measures and there have been many brain imaging studies showing unconscious perception. Yes, they used a strict criterion here, but so do some other groups. The authors themselves do not make the claim in the paper that the PR does. Rather they stress the attentional findings. I might be missing something subtle about their methods---and would be glad to be corrected. Absence that---my best guess is that some publicist for the University was determined to get press for this work--but did so for the wrong reason. I feel their attentional findings are much more noteworthy than any additional support they might add at this point to the case for subliminal perception.

There was a general feeling a while back that the science did not support subliminal perception. This was before the unconscious had become such a hot area of study and all the action was still thought to happen in consciousness. But as I point out in my post---we have moved way beyond this now.

I think that at least some of the old attitude came from the desire to maintain the illusion that we are in control.

I suspect that in the not to distant future people will understand much more about subliminal perception and the ins and outs of how to get it to work for advertising. I hope we will outlaw it as it is outlawed in Britain.

Anonymous said...

Maybe there is an element of confidence involved. For example, you notice things in passing, even number sequences (e.g. a truck passing by that includes a telephone #, or even a license). You may have had no particular reason to remember it and so don't believe you did so, but lo and behold - later you find that you want it for some reason, and to your surprise you do remember it correctly.

Anonymous said...

I loved this article on your blog.
After spending a long retreat in jhana meditation (not vipassyana, but and earlier more intense experience from the Theravada monks) I am reminded of one of the aims of meditation: to stop the habits of thought that are in the pre-cognitive realm. I'm still trying, but have some small success after decades.
Lois, keep on writing, Rosie

Thomas S. Alexander said...

texas liability insurance
liability insurance ny
liability insurance wa