There is an absurd amount of sensory gating going on with the sense of smell in particular, which you can test by fasting for a few days - by the 48h mark you will smell things you never expect, sources of odor that are across the room feel like you put your nose inside of them. I think this makes pheromone effects in human mating a lot more plausible than naively expected, too.
I am still unconvinced blindsight has anything to do with consciousness, though - some subconscious processes could also be blindseeing, e.g. I expect a blindseeing person cannot read text in their native alphabet, which happens w/o conscious action for most people.
Centrally consciousness is about qualia, which are difficult to pin down to any neural correlate.
This is pretty fascinating.
There is an absurd amount of sensory gating going on with the sense of smell in particular, which you can test by fasting for a few days - by the 48h mark you will smell things you never expect, sources of odor that are across the room feel like you put your nose inside of them. I think this makes pheromone effects in human mating a lot more plausible than naively expected, too.
I am still unconvinced blindsight has anything to do with consciousness, though - some subconscious processes could also be blindseeing, e.g. I expect a blindseeing person cannot read text in their native alphabet, which happens w/o conscious action for most people.
Centrally consciousness is about qualia, which are difficult to pin down to any neural correlate.
I wonder if psychedelics have an effect on backup sensory pathways. Isn't the pulvinar nucleus in the thalamus also heavily affected by psychedelics?