Inattentional Blindness_of interest to those in limbo

I thought this article was interesting and may account somewhat for all the people who are in limbo.

here are many who offer opinions to people who have symptoms and are in limbo. The fact is even the experts are not experts when it comes to neurological dysfunction. The scope of neurology is too vast, even if they have the same diagnosis each person presents differently, it is the nature of neurologic problems.

So take heed that even the experts get it wrong so if you are in limbo keep fighting for answers.

"In an experiment popularized by the book of the same name, INVISIBLE GORILLA, volunteers were told to keep track of how many times a basketball was passed between players. While the ball was being tossed, someone in a gorilla suit walked between them in plain view. Very few people noticed the gorilla because they were so focused on counting the passes.

The invisible gorilla study is the most famous example of a phenomenom called “inattentional blindness.” When we pay close attention to one thing, we often fail to notice other things – even if they are obvious.

"One thing has always bothered me about the gorilla experiment. Counting basketball passes is not a real-life task and the participants have no training in it. It’s possible they are easily fooled or just lazy.

Would the same thing happen to experts?

A recent study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital confirms experts suffer from inattentional blindness and raises some uncomfortable questions in the process. The scientists asked experienced radiologists to identify white nodules within five CT scans made up of hundreds of images of lung tissue – a process used to identify potential lung cancer. In one of the scans, the scientists inserted an image of a gorilla almost 50 times the size of a nodule.

Despite its relatively large size and its incongruous presence in the CT scans, only four of the 24 radiologists noticed the gorilla. It’s not that it was difficult to see; eye-tracking data showed clearly that the radiologists looked right at it. And when later told to look for a gorilla, nearly everyone found it.

The scientists repeated the experiment on untrained volunteers and none noticed the gorilla. Not surprisingly, the radiologists were also much better at spotting the warning signs of lung cancer.

The confirmation that expert observers suffer from inattentional blindness raises some troubling questions. By training radiologists to identify white nodules, are they more likely to miss other life-threatening anomalies? Could the same issues pertain to other expert observers like MRI technicians, air traffic controllers, and police officers?

That’s one scary gorilla."

LMAO at the radiologists missing the gorilla - that’s what you call focus! :slight_smile:

A lot of it (most of it?) is in the question though. If they’d been asked simply to look for abnormalities, I bet they would have spotted it.

It is relevant though - go see an MS specialist, but actually have something different that’s inconsistent with MS? How many would spot it? How many would send the patient home with a “functional neurological condition” label?

And what about a radiologist being advised that someone has ?MS - would the radiologist spot other things?

I had a spinal scan before my MS diagnosis, but for something structural. I checked the images myself fairly recently - there was a spinal cord lesion, and the radiologist had missed it!

Karen x