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NotTooDeep t1_ja4il4p wrote

Reply to comment by andrewmmm in Is there any possible relation between the recent earthquakes in Turkey/Syria, Japan and Papua New Guinea? by Corvid-21

> Baader–Meinhof

I've been googling on something that should be related to this for a while and can't find the info. My question is this: what is the opposite of the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon?

I recall watching a show decades ago that described the discovery of nerve cells in the lymph nodes in the 1970s or 80s. The research overthrew the common understanding that the immune system was autonomous from the rest of us, especially our brains, and kind of just did its thing. This gave some credence to depression as having a role in reducing our immunity to disease. You catch more colds when you're down.

The person interviewing the scientist asked why it had taken centuries for anyone to see these nerves. All of the thousands of med students and researchers and physicians did not see these nerves.

Is there a word or phrase that describes this phenomena? Blind spot comes to mind, but not the physical blind spot in the eye; I'm referring to some kind of blind spot that filters out images in the brain because we 'know' they don't exist, so we don't see them.

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notionovus t1_ja4vwx5 wrote

The term you might be referring to is scotoma. The technical term for a "blind spot" in the eye, it is used in psychology to refer to something you become blind or ignorant of.

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4x49ers t1_ja55m7i wrote

I'm thinking of something I learned as task oriented blindness but is apparently really called Inattentional blindness.

>Inattentional blindness or perceptual blindness (rarely called inattentive blindness) occurs when an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight, purely as a result of a lack of attention rather than any vision defects or deficits.

To over simplify a bit, they didn't see them because they weren't looking for them. You might have heard of the invisible gorilla test which demonstrates it, and I recall a BBC program where they were testing it as well: they had a pilot fly some people from A to B telling them to keep an eye out for X, I can't recall. Anywhere they flew over Stonehenge on the way there, and no one saw it, then flying the same route back (without being told to look for X) they were surprised to find it along the same path.

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NotTooDeep t1_ja57gpp wrote

Yes. I found that Wikipedia page as well. This also makes me think about situational awareness. That scene in the diner in the original Bourne Identity movie, where he can't recall who he is, but tells the young woman who is helping him about the people and objects in the environment around him and what their meaning is.

I imagine a professional boxer sees arm and foot movements in a different way than someone who has never seen a boxing match.

Your example of the flight over Stonehenge is funny! Thanks for that.

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g0d15anath315t t1_ja62024 wrote

Sounds sort of like the "phenomenon" of Psychic Blindness.

The brain doesn't comprehend what it's seeingsl so it just subs in something that does make sense.

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