Brain blindness

 New research from psychologists at Vanderbilt University reveals that intense emotions can cause a form of "brain blindness" that limits our ability to perceive the world around us. This phenomenon is particularly true for drivers, who may become less alert on the road when confronted with emotional stimuli, such as accidents or gruesome images. Experiments showed that individuals were more likely to make mistakes when confronted with controversial or shocking images, underscoring the importance of alertness in everyday life.

We all know that seeing something emotionally disturbing can distract us, but scientists say it can also cause blindness… not in our eyes, but in our brains. This ScienCentral video demonstrates this. It's easy to look at a passing car accident, but doing so can be dangerous.

Vanderbilt University psychologist David Zalt said that "emotional" sights—like car accidents, a gruesome crime scene, or a bit of pornography—can briefly blind us to everything going on around us, reducing our alertness and potentially threatening us.

"Something that evokes emotion not only captures our attention, but reaches such a scale that it drowns out information that reaches us later. We don't even look at the image anymore ," Zald said.

As described in the "Psychonomic Bulletin and Review," Zald and his colleagues conducted an experiment with 21 people that involved observing how quickly a neutral target image in a series changed at a rate of 10 frames per second, and whether it rotated left or right. The volunteers gave correct responses unless a more gory or erotic image appeared before the target image.

Co-author Steven Most of Yale University says that in these cases, participants were much more likely to give incorrect answers. When an emotionally arousing image is presented, it seems that a short circuit occurs in the brain that helps generate the intended visual experience , More explains.

Zald said emotional blindness happens all the time in our daily lives, but it probably plays the most important role in car drivers because less than a second is enough to cause an accident