Out of sight, NOT out of mind - Unconscious information processing -

"Out of sight, out of mind" is a widely held belief that our brain simply ignores unconscious information. In this talk, I will challenge this view with multiple sources of evidence from my recent studies, including language processing, multi-sensory mapping, and rudimentary photoreception. I attempt to address the following three questions respectively: (1) Can syntax without meaning be processed without consciousness? (2) Can sound-shape mapping occur before we are consciously aware of the stimuli? (3) What happens in the brain when we perceive indistinguishable lights? By investigating these questions and revealing what information can be processed outside the realm of consciousness, we can re-examine the functions of consciousness and thus refine our understanding of it.

Bio

Shao-Min (Sean) Hung has a B.Sc. in Psychology from National Taiwan University and is currently a PhD candidate in Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. He is interested in consciousness, vision, language, and the relationships among them. Specifically he focuses on finding the neural correlates and behavioral consequences of unconscious processing on complex information via psychophysics and fMRI.