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BRAIN NOT THINKING IF YOU'RE BLINKING
26 July 2005
Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_obje...name_page.html

SCIENTISTS have discovered our brains shut down every time we blink.

They believe parts of the mind turn off so humans do not notice the sudden change from light to dark and back again.

Many Big Brother viewers thought dizzy blonde Helen Adams was mindless when she famously said: "I like blinking, I do" - but now neurologists at University College London have found blinks shut the brain down for a total of nine days a year.

Volunteers in the study had fibre optic cables put in their mouths.

A light was then shone into the roof of the mouth - giving the effect of their whole head being lit up and illuminating the eyeballs - as a scanner monitored the brain's activity.

The team found the areas that turn off during blinking are the visual cortex, which is responsible for seeing, plus the parietal and prefrontal areas - active when a person is conscious of what is happening around them.

Researcher Davina Bristow said: "Suppressing the brain areas involved in visual awareness during blinks may be a neural mechanism for preventing the brain from becoming aware of the eyelid sweeping down over the pupil and the world going dark."

The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust and reported in the journal Current Biology.