Current Biology
Volume 12, Issue 5, 5 March 2002, Pages 403-407
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Speeding Up Reaction Time with Invisible Stimuli

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Normal subjects react more quickly to a pair of visual stimuli than to a stimulus alone. This phenomenon is known as the redundant signal effect (RSE) [1] and represents an example of divided visual attention in which signal processing is carried out in parallel to the advantage of response speed. A most interesting aspect of this phenomenon is that it can occur when one stimulus in a pair cannot be consciously detected because of hemianopia 2, 3 or unilateral extinction [4] resulting from brain damage. Here, we report that a similar dissociation between visual awareness and visually guided behavior is present in normal subjects who show an RSE even when the luminance of one of a pair of stimuli is below detection threshold. The observed RSE cannot be attributed to probability summation because it violates Miller's race inequality [5] and is likely to be related to neural summation between supra- and subthreshold stimuli. Given that a similar implicit RSE is present in hemispherectomy patients [3], we hypothesize that the site of this summation might be the superior colliculus (SC).

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