Our Brain Takes Snapshots

It turns out that the human brain takes a series of snapshots, very quickly, that appears to us as continuous perception. This is the way a movie filmstrip works–the dark line between each frame tricks the eye and the brain to perceiving a series of still images as moving. Could this be why it is so difficult for us to see the visitors–that they can control how they synchronize with our perception?

Just as the body goes through a 24-hour sleep-wake cycle controlled by a circadian clock, brain function undergoes such cyclic activity–but at a much faster rate.

The Medical Xpress website quotes neuroscientist Gregor Thut as saying, "Despite experiencing the world as a continuum, we do not sample our world continuously but in discrete snapshots determined by the cycles of brain rhythms."

Do animal brains experience the world the same way we do? An international group of prominent scientists has signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in which they say that animals are as conscious and aware as humans are.

On the io.9 website, George Dvorsky quotes the Declaration as stating that "the absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors."

The scientific committee is especially impressed with the intelligence of parrots, which, according to the Declaration, "appear to offer, in their behavior, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy a striking case of parallel evolution of consciousness. Evidence of near human-like levels of consciousness has been most dramatically observed in African Gray parrots."

You may not be able to see the Visitors, but you can HEAR all about them from the series of contactee interviews that Anne Strieber has compiled, just for our subscribers. You’ll hear from Matt, who suffered some of the same type of ridicule that Whitley did, and from Michael, who saw some amazing creatures, and from MANY OTHERS.