Virginia Tech Mass Shooting.

Copyright 2003 -  Revision  Sunday March 16, 2008 22:19 -0600

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There is evidence in an interview on 'Scarborough Country' that Cho Seung-Hui had Subliminal Distraction exposure.

Subliminal Distraction was discovered when it caused mental breaks for office workers in the 1960's.

Scroll Down one screen or Click Here to skip introductory text and site links.

This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected  until the 1960's.

In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.

It caused mental breaks for office workers.

You will find this material hard to believe.

This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.

For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.

The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.

The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.

This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.

The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.

If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read  ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.

Long  term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong  Kundalini Yoga

If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.

TOP__

Virginia Tech Shooting

Intense exposure from subliminal stimulation can produce psychiatric outcomes. Those outcomes can be seen in failed Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga experiences. Although users of the exercises ignorantly but honestly believe supernatural forces cause the negative psychiatric symptoms they correctly record them. Depression, fear, paranoia, and psychotically disturbed reasoning are some of those outcomes. Two of Seng-Hui Cho's suite-mates gave interviews in which they named behaviors that would have caused SD exposure. Neither person in the interview understood the significance of what they saw. The video Cho left indicates he was having an ongoing mental break.

There has been a new interview on Greta Van Susteren's program. Click line and see, May 03, 07 below.

Cho had a mental break, Subliminal Distraction was the killer.

The article below condenses the explanation to  three pages in Word.

It was written for a MySpace Blog.

The original contents of this page are below. Click Here to jump down.

The thirty-two dead from the Virginia Tech incident will pass into obscurity unless the Virginia Tech administration steps up to take responsibility and stop future suicides, disappearances, and shootings.

I have an acknowledgement letter from the President of Virginia Tech assuring me that Subliminal Distraction would be included in their investigation but no action was taken in the committee report.

Interviews of suitemates on two Cable TV programs revealed Cho sat in the common room using his laptop and studying while the other residents walked around him ignoring him. He increased that behavior in the month before the shooting. ...  That’s a description of Subliminal Distraction.

Short term intense exposure creates the believed to be harmless episode. But Cho's exposure was low-level and long-term. Intensive short term exposure usually happens because of the nature of business offices. It also happens to one in three hospital patients who spend more than five days in the intensive care unit. That episode is called ICU Psychosis. Doctors and hospitals are stumped as to the cause. 

There is no short cut to explain Subliminal Distraction, why students commit suicide and disappear, or why Cho had his mental break. But I can shorten the version on my site, VisionAndPsychosis.Net.

If you are a psychology major you already have this information and can verify the basics for classmates who did not take Psychology 101.

Humans evolved from hunter-gather pre-humans and we have a vision driven warning system, peripheral vision reflexes. A small slice of your vision field functions subliminally to detect only motion. Stationary objects in this small area of far-peripheral vision are invisible.

(Perform the psychology demonstration of subliminal sight and habituation in peripheral vision on my site.)

If you have ever startled when someone stepped up beside you or reacted when you ‘caught something out of the corner of your eye,’ that was a peripheral vision reflex.

To be able to concentrate without interruption we have the ability to ignore detected movement in subliminal peripheral vision.

But because there are no "off switches" for sensor cells on the rods and cones of your retina, you can’t stop subliminally seeing that detected movement, if you can successfully ignore it. (Some people can’t ignore distracting movement in peripheral vision  and they can’t have Subliminal Distraction exposure.)

If stimulus strikes the sensor cells neural impulses go to your brain over their normal channels.

Those two facts in the physiology of sight create a conflict, which allows Subliminal Distraction exposure.

As long as you maintain light dissociation for events happening around you every time subliminal sight detects additional discrete movement your brain attempts a new reflex. There is no memory involved at the level where these reflexes are triggered, below thought, reason, and consciousness.

You will be unaware of this happening because you habituated the stimulus, movement in peripheral vision.

That constant subliminal appreciation of threat will eventually color thought and reason creating paranoia.

How do I know that?

I have been researching it for five years and there are two examples of this that are in plain sight for anyone to see.

For 3000 and 5000 years respectively users of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga have experienced health and mental health benefits from performing those exercises. But when they perform too many sessions in a compact time frame they have a first psychotic episode.

This is well known and many Internet sites warn of this phenomenon. The DSM included Qi Gong Psychotic Reaction in the last edition. They don’t know what causes the mental break but they included it as a Culture Bound Syndrome. (DSM =Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental illness of the American Psychiatric Association.)

The object is to break into the national news cycle before a new round of suicides and disappearances begin this fall.

The thirty-two dead will either pass into obscurity having died in vain, or Virginia Tech will step up to meet this challenge.

A fitting monument to these victims would be that the shootings, suicides, and disappearances stop.

Original page begins here.

First news reports of the developing story.

VT Police have identified the shooter as Cho Seung Hui, a 23 year-old permanent legal resident from Korea. He was an English major living on campus in Harper Hall.

Seng-Hui came to the United States from South Korea in 1992. He was a resident in a Virginia suburb of Washington DC.. His class work in creative writing was so disturbed that he was referred for counseling but refused to go. The Tribune cited a confidential source as saying Cho left a note with unspecified complaints in his dorm room. He had set a fire in the dorm room in the past and is said to have been involved in stalking women.

The common unanswered question is, 'why did it happen?' Most say it makes no sense.

This site is about why things like this happen.

Greta___

Key information in an interview on MSNC's Scarborough Country with Kran Grewal, a suite-mate of Cho's, was that Cho worked on papers with his laptop in the common area of the dorm suite. The interview aired in the first fifteen minute segment of the show.

A second suite-mate said every time he saw Cho he was sitting in the common room with a note pad working on class assignments.

May 3, 07   A new interview on Greta Van Susteren's program has the same suite mate saying that Cho increased the time spent in the common room recently. That would be the change in behavior that increased exposure from Subliminal Distraction and brought on the psychotic episode. The video is on the Fox  News site today. I don't know how long it will be there.

Living with Cho

"It became routine to let him sit around and carry on with our day."

http://www.foxnews.com/video2/player06.html?041907/041907_greta_grewal&On_the_Record&Living%20With%20Cho&Living%20With%20Cho&On%20the%20Record&-1&Shows&822&&&exp

The video about the missing attorney is probably this same problem, exposure from Subliminal Distraction. "Where is Scoop Daniel?"

Cho would have been exposed to Subliminal Distraction as he ignored suite mates walking by in the common room while he used the laptop.

Even so exposure from Subliminal Distraction is usually harmless. We all have such exposure every day. When intense exposure happens in a compact time frame a threshold is reached and a mental event is the outcome.

High school associates have been interviewed and they tell a story of a loner who was picked on and ridiculed because of his accent and low mumbling voice.

The usual psychobabble is being put forth as the reason why Cho carried out the shooting.

If you are not a regular reader of this site you should start by performing the psychology demonstration of habituation in peripheral vision, then reading the Everquest Connection page. A Psychology Demonstration   The Everquest Connection    Redlake School Shooting

This site is a historical investigation of the effect of Subliminal Distraction.

April 19, 2007:

NBC News announced that they received a package, essentially a press kit, from a mass murder. Dated material indicates the package was started six days ago. The enclosed CD Rom disk contained a rambling incoherent psychotic video of  accusations against imaginary adversaries. The package was time stamped at the Post Office at 9:01 am the morning of the shooting, It turns out that this mailing was what he did during the two hours between the two shootings. An incorrect address and zip code delayed the overnight package one day.

Virginia Tech April 16, 2007:

TV News programs Fox and CNN are reporting 33 dead and 15 injured at Virginia Tech University. Those wounded at  Norris Hall are being treated at area hospitals. News reports through the day have varied in the number that were believed injured and killed.  The University site now confirms 33 dead as of 10PM Monday night

A 20 year old Asian man, heavily armed, with a vest and belts of ammunition, was seen by students and identified as the shooter . Originally the story was that the shooter was not a student but had entered the US from China on a student visa and was dead on the scene. Fox news ran a breaking news special with call-ins from students at the school. The man was believed to be looking for a girlfriend.  Doors to the second building, Norris Hall,  were chained shut from the inside. There were about two hours between two shootings. Through the day University security officials would not confirm the two events were connected.

The first student was killed at West Ambler Hall., a co-ed  dorm, at 7:00 AM. A student phoned CNN to say that the shooter had an argument with his girlfriend. When the residence hall advisor attempted to stop the fight the 'boyfriend' shot both of them. The second shooting about  9:45 AM, was at the opposite end of the campus. The second scene was in Norris Hall an engineering building. It is unknown what the shooter did in the time period between the two shootings. (These stories are unconfirmed at 2:50PM EST.) The president of the University read a statement saying there were multiple injuries at the first scene. A hospital spokesman said there were two injured brought to the hospital around 7:30 AM.

The amount of armament the shooter had plus the preparation to chain and  lock the doors indicates a well planned event. There had been bomb threats two weeks earlier and it is believed that the shooter was testing security response time with the fake threats.  The ATF has recovered two 9mm handguns or one 9MM and one .22 caliber handgun. There are different stories in cable news reporting. 

MSNBC has a story quoting a student in the classroom that the shooter looked into the class twice before entering and shooting. He said nothing and had a blank expression on his face. Of the professor and twenty five or so students only four walked out and two of those were wounded. When the shooter left the room they blocked the door. He returned and shot through it several times. None of those through the door shots hit anyone.

VT Police broke through the chained doors downstairs and followed the sound of gun shots to the second floor. Just as they reached that level the shots stopped. The gunman had committed suicide.

April 21 2007

Dr Phil McGraw interviewed on the Larry King program denied that Cho was psychotic while performing the shooting. He thought paranoid schizophrenia was Cho's mental problem. "The shooting was too well organized and carried out to be the product of psychosis," said McGraw. Dr Michael Welner was the second guest. He agreed with much of what McGraw said. His point of view was that the psychotic element was the delusional thinking but Cho was able to carry out the shooting just as other psychotics have functioned normally in some parts of their lives and activities. John Nash the mentally ill mathematician of the movie "A Beautiful Mind" is often given as an example of that severe psychosis but normal functioning.

On this site the term "narrowly focused" is used to describe the psychotic-like beliefs of Qi Gong Masters and Kundalini Yoga Gurus. They might believe that they can levitate, walk through solid objects, read minds and direct actions of others through mental telepathy, but function normally in their daily lives. In the system used by authors of the DSM each of these conditions would have a different name for the "disorder." That points out the failure of that categorization system. Even depression can be a delusional mental state. In fact depression was the chief complaint of the crew of the Belgica on the 1898 Belgian Polar Expedition. The entire ship's crew began to go insane when they were confined to the ship trapped in polar ice for thirteen months. That means that depression can be an outcome of Subliminal Distraction exposure.

Remember that different experts on other TV programs who saw the same video and got the same information from witnesses were positive that Cho had a psychotic mental break. They described his delusional ramblings as psychotic. .

Kran Grewal appeared and said Cho had never shown signs of violence. One student present during the classroom shooting said Cho said nothing and had no facial expression. Grewal  saw Cho at 5 AM on the morning of the shooting. When Dr. Welner asked why he thought he was spared he said he felt lucky.

What you should remember is that schizophrenia is a diagnosis, nothing more. Writers of the DSM acknowledge they do not know what causes any of the "disorders" in the DSM. They create diagnostic criterion based on observations. Often new disorders are created by subdividing old ones or renaming them. This is done by voting of the membership. There is no science involved. No test is available to apply and each doctor makes his own decision on how much weight to put on each observation. With identically the same symptoms you may have a different diagnosis from different doctors. The original intent of the DSM was to prevent that.

This happened in our family case. There had been extensive neurological and MRI testing. There had been eight hours of psycho-neurological questioning and tests. None of this revealed any physical problem. With all that information we still got three different opinions on the cause of Connie's memory loss, delusions, paranoia, and psychotic behaviors.

Doctors have a standard of treatment for each of the disorders. They can depend on the support of other doctors if they stay within that standard of treatment.

Design of the dorm suite.

The layout of the seating in the common room of the  dorm suite appeared on the Anderson Cooper  360 program. There was a couch and coffee table on a long wall, one padded chair in the corner and a wooden chair under the window.  Seating in either the corner chair or the chair with its back to the window would have offered full Cubicle Level Protection. But sitting on the end of the couch beside the door to the bed room hallway would have exposed a student to Subliminal Distraction as the other residents walked by. It's just that simple.

One student said Cho always took the classroom seat nearest the door. He couldn't do that unless he arrived early enough to find  the seat unoccupied. That means he might have had  additional exposure as other classmates arrived and had to walk by him to enter the room.

Your subliminal sight only detects 'movement and position' to trigger the vision reflex. You identify the movement when you turn and look at it with "conscious sight." That means once you learn to ignore movement in peripheral vision it is not identified by your subconscious. Taking this one step further this also means exposure during the day is cumulative. All the unidentified movement is the same to your subconscious. If you are having trouble with this concept perform the demonstration of habitation in peripheral vision. (Click Here, off page link)

Someone with high risk behaviors will have exposure when other students in the same situation will not. Think of daydreaming as a slight dissociation for things around you. Any thought activity that engages eyes open deep mental investment, modeled by daydreaming,  will allow exposure to happen if there is repeating detectable movement in peripheral vision there.

Being a quiet introspective loner lends one to those high risk behaviors.

Additional Factors.

Research at the University of Georgia in 2002 sought to find a common factor in schizophrenics and their disease free first order relatives.

Dr L. Stephen Miller found a defect of the M-Channel for vision in the brain. The defect was hyperactivity. It is not clear if the hyperactivity is there because of inherited physical attributes that make subliminal sight super sensitive to movement or if the hyperactivity causes additional triggers for vision reflexes independent of detected movement.

In either case this problem may be the genetic factor for mental illness. It would explain a lot of the mystery of why only forty percent of schizophrenics appear to be genetically connected within families.

Paranoia

We do not have to guess the outcomes of exposure from Subliminal Distraction. There are two examples available. Those who practice Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga have the same mental events when too many group sessions are done in a compact time frame. Looking at both exercises, eyes open meditation engages the same level of dissociation as knowledge work in business offices. The movement of other group exercise performers nearby supplies the repeating detectable movement in peripheral vision. In other words both exercises can supply the "special circumstances" for exposure from Subliminal Distraction. Of course, someone who simply performs the katas and poses without eyes-open mental investment will not have exposure.

Each of the exercises has a goal, enlightenment. For Qi Gong it is called opening the third eye. In Kundalini Yoga it is the Awakening of Kundalini. Some times participants have mental problems while seeking enlightenment. Sites for both groups warn of this problem but they believe the serious mental outcomes are caused by performing the exercise incorrectly or other paranormal reasons. In each case there are even sites that blame demons for the negative mental outcomes.

Subliminal Distraction and Violence

This is not the first time Subliminal Distraction has caused sudden violence. During the 1830's, in the fur trapping period of US history, mountain men chose to live alone risking illness or accident during the snow bound winter months of the Rocky Mountains, rather than risk that a cabin mate would have a berserk episode and try to kill them. It was called Cabin Fever.

In 1898 the entire ship's crew began to go insane when the Belgica was trapped in polar ice. It was the Belgian Polar Expedition. Dr. Frederick Cook's book Through the First Antarctic Night"  The incident has always been blamed on mass hysteria. All but one man recovered when they worked outside for several months chopping the ship out of the ice. How does mass hysteria cause permanent mental illness?

There have been psychotic mental breaks on Russian space missions, Soyuz-21. The "special circumstances" for exposure from Subliminal Distraction are present when two or more people attempt to live and work in too-small single-room arrangements. The Russian space agency gave a dozen reasons for the mental problems but none was supported by findings.

There was a murder of a postal worker by a man who had a mental break after taking the Landmark Education seminar, The Forum. (See Psychotic Mental Breaks and Subliminal Distraction below for the explanation.)

Guest experts on TV interview programs point out that these incidents of mass violence and sudden violence happen around the world. On this site Culture Bound Syndromes are shown to include attacks on people and things. It is called Amok in Malaysia and Iich'aa among the Navajo.

Other shootings associated with Subliminal Distraction.

Jason Weed took a Landmark Education seminar training course, had a mental break as a result of that course,  and killed a postal worker named Robert Jenkins on December 21, 2001. Seventeen months later a commitment hearing was held to determine if Weed should be released under 18 U.S.C. 4243 (2000), the federal statute governing commitment of persons found not guilty by reason of insanity. Experts for both sides agreed and testified that he was psychotic at the time of the murder but his  psychotic symptoms had disappeared. The court decided that Weed failed to prove he was no longer a threat to the community in that he might still have latent mental illness. He was committed to the custody of the Attorney General of the United States. That court decision was affirmed on appeal.   (There had been two previous hearings at nine months and one year after the commitment.)

The appeal decision (see links section below) mentioned that video tape of the original interrogation showed psychotic behavior. Weed switched from laughter to anger and had many incomprehensible statements. 

Dr. Curtis Grundy testified that Weed's mental problem should be diagnosed as "brief psychotic disorder." He said the mental break happed because of a defect but the nature of that defect was unknown. Dr. Grundy said that Weed displayed symptoms of psychosis at  the time of the shooting, including visual and auditory hallucinations, paranoia,  delusions, and severe agitation. No additional psychotic episodes had happened since the murder.

Dr. Harrison Pope, Harvard Med.,  testified for the government. He interviewed Weed by phone and  reviewed the records to reach a diagnosis. He discounted the participation in an est seminar and blamed a "complex partial seizure" deep in the brain. He could not cite any evidence of that having happened.

A report from the Bureau of Prisons, called a "Certificate of Mental Disease or Defect and  Dangerousness," was introduced. It stated that mental health workers treating Weed believed that,  "Weed is currently suffering from a mental disease or defect that would cause him  to present a substantial risk of danger to others if released." A forensic evaluation  submitted by staff psychiatrist Bryon Herbel, M.D., and staff psychologist Robert E. Cochrane, Psy. D., diagnosed Weed as having "Brief Psychotic Disorder, In Remission." They noted that the symptoms shown a the time of the shooting had "remitted a few days  after his arrest, following treatment with a single dose of Haldol and Ativan." 

Note that both psychiatrists create a mental problem or seizure in Mr. Weed without any medical evidence that such a seizure happened or that a brain defect existed. The story including sudden onset and recovery matchs the description of Subliminal Distraction. The est participation probably was the cause of the incident even though the psychiatrists discounted it. Today the mental breaks associated with est are acknowledged. They claim an incident rate at less than 1/1000 of 1%.

On-line TV stories indicate Weed was released to a half-way house in 2005.

 ...to be continued...

Landmark Education has known for many years that some people who take their training seminar have mental breaks. Their site warns anyone with mental health problems not to take the intensive confrontational three day course. They further state that in rare cases even those with no previous history of mental problems have experienced these mental events.

There is a long history of this problem and it has been investigated. The psychologists could only find that the mental breaks happened in seminars where aggressive lecturers were used. 

A French TV program took a hidden camera into a seminar and filmed the process. All the participants were doing was sitting in the audience while watching a lecturer interrogate volunteers about their psychosocial problems.

When someone sits in the seminar and intently involves themselves in the action at the front of the room they eventually reach a state of light dissociation for activity around them. In that mental state they can subliminally detect the small movements of others nearby. That is Subliminal Distraction.

I suspect that those who have psychotic events were being exposed at work or home before they took the intense three day seminar. The additional intense exposure pushed them over the edge.

The mental breaks happen other places....

In ICU Psychosis, exposure happens every fifteen minutes around the clock as nurses check vital signs. Eyes-open daydreaming provides the mental state necessary to engage Subliminal Distraction exposure. One in three patients who spend more than five days in a hospital  ICU has these mental breaks. Doctors and nurses do not understand what causes these events and respond by strapping the victims down while exposure continues.

In the Landmark Education seminar, The Forum, exposure is random but happens during three days of ten hour per day sessions. Fewer people have the mental breaks. They happen shortly after the seminar and there have been violent episodes and claimed suicides. Victims are just sitting in the audience participating in the seminar. Concentration to the point of "suspension of disbelief" creates light dissociation for some. They can subliminally detect small movements of others around them. That's Subliminal Distraction. There have been investigations going back to 1977 attempting to find out why these seminar-connected mental breaks happen. None of the "experts" has solved the problem.

Colleges are unaware of this phenomenon and do not provide Cubicle Level Protection for student study areas or computer workstations. There is an ongoing problem of sudden unexplained disappearances and bizarre suicides of college students.

Cults and Christian missionary groups use too-small single-room meeting arrangements. Many people are crowded close together. Just as in the Landmark Education case close proximity seating combined with light dissociation while closely following the words of the speaker create the opportunity for Subliminal Distraction. The Christian groups view the manifestation of speaking in tongues, holy laughter, or other bizarre behaviors as visitation from the Holy Spirit. It is Subliminal Distraction.

That same exposure happened in biblical times. It is mentioned in scripture. St. John wrote of it in Corinthians in the New Testament. In those times of limited primitive education for the masses, this phenomenon convinced new converts of the truth in the message from Christians.

Subliminal Distraction

Subliminal Distraction arises from the fact that there is no on/off switch for sensor cells of  your eyes and ears. In most cases references to SD are auditory distraction subliminally perceived while concentrating in a noisy location such as a business office. You can be awakened by sounds you perceive while asleep.

Visual Subliminal Distraction happens when you concentrate to the level of slight dissociation. In that mental state all humans have a vision driven system that will break your concentration with a startle if movement is subliminally detected toward you in peripheral vision.

A thin slice of your far peripheral vision functions subliminally to detect only movement and trigger this reflex. Stationary objects in this area of vision are invisible.

Conflict of Physiology

The conflict of our physiology explored  on this site is that although you can ignore  peripheral vision reflexes, you cannot 'stop seeing' the movement that causes them. You cannot tell your brain to stop subliminally detecting movement in peripheral vision and attempting to force the reflex.

Peripheral Vision Reflexes

Peripheral vision reflexes are an evolutionarily developed, retained, warning system. For early man or pre-humans to survive they needed a system to warn  them of predators approaching from behind. To function it must work all the time no matter what  you are doing. If you had the ability to turn the brain system off at will, it could not warn you in critical situations.

The act of concentrating on something at arm's length, in your hand for instance, causes physiological changes in the eye.

When you focus on a close object your eye accommodates by changing the shape of the lens.  This shape-change expands the area covered by Subliminal Peripheral Vision.

Plitz's reflex, or Attention Reflex, changes the size of  your pupil. This floods the retina with ambient light desensitizing the rods so that only a large movement close by will trigger a reflex.

The Discovery of Subliminal Distraction

Beginning in the late 1950's there was an effort to re-design business offices. Herman Miller introduced the Action Office 1 in 1964 but modified it by adding vision blocking panels creating the first cubicle by 1968. There is a claim for this invention on the Herman Miller Inc. site. Some of the workers using those first prototypes began to have mental breaks. Subliminal sight and peripheral vision reflexes were determined to be the cause of the mental events. The cubicle solved that problem. When that happened the investigation stopped,

Those designers and psychologists made three mistakes. They thought they were the first to create the problem. To this day they believe it can only cause a harmless temporary period of confusion and psychotic-like behavior. They still think that the business office is the only place with intense exposure necessary to create the problem.

In today's world there are many places where this exposure can happen.

Psychotic Mental Breaks and Subliminal Distraction

The mental breaks of Intensive Care Unit hospital patients are recognized. (Goggle ICU Psychosis.) The psychotic episodes of Qi Gong, Kundalini Yoga, and 'est' the Large Group Awareness Training Seminar by Landmark Education are also well known. But the connection between them is not known at all.

Subliminal Distraction is that connection because the "special conditions" for exposure are present in all three activities.

In the case of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga eyes open meditation while concentrating to perform the exercise substitutes for the mental investment to the point of dissociation of knowledge workers in business offices. The movement of others performing the exercise, when done in groups, substitutes for the office staff that walks by an unprotected workstation in those 1060's offices.

The Forum, by Landmark Education, has a warning on their site that mental breaks have happened to some people with no history of mental illness while participating in their seminar.  They don't know the cause. Sitting in an audience while intently listening to a speaker creates a similar level of mental investment to that of knowledge workers in business offices. While in that intense concentrating mental state participants can subliminally detect the movement of others sitting nearby.

The problem experienced by est participants has been investigated by psychologists. The only thing they found is that the mental breaks happen in those sessions with the more intense, aggressive lecturers.

Genetic Connections

Investigations at the University of Georgia in 2002,  by L. Stephen Miller Ph.D., found a genetic defect in the M-Pathway for vision in the brains of schizophrenics and their close disease free relatives. That defect was hyperactivity. This may be the genetic connection for mental illness. In addition those with this defect may be more susceptible to exposure from Subliminal Distraction to cause violence.

M and P Pathways

Although all signals from the retina travel on the optic nerve there are actually two pathways. They route the signals from conscious sight and peripheral vision to different parts of  the brain. This allows humans to have two vision systems running at the same time. The pathway from peripheral vision is subliminally observed.

http://www.vestibular.org/computer.html

Virginia Tech Shooting Links

Been v. Jason M. Weed and Landmark Education Corporation (2004), Plaintiff's Response to Defendant Landmark Motion Dismiss Plaintiff

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Been_v._Jason_M._Weed_and_Landmark_Education_Corporation_(2004),_Plaintiff's_Response_to_Defendant_Landmark_Motion_Dismiss_Plaintiff

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF OKLAHOMA  (D.C. NO. CR-02-10-K)
        
This court filing contains a surprising amount of information on the Jason Weed's shooting of Robert Jenkins. It is about the required hearing to determine if Weed could be released.

http://pacer.ca10.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/getopn.pl?OPINION=03-5100.wpd

Links

I recommend this site.  But you will have to browse several pages.

"Early in evolution, human ancestors had only peripheral vision. The role of this early vision system (still preserved in our eyes) was to detect motion and set off protective reflexes."

http://www.wayfinding.net/vsionsys.htm

Peripheral vision Lego tester

Adobe file with tester construction and data results sample

http://www.edex.com.au/lego/support/activities/032_peripheral_vision.pdf

Nightwalking

"In The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary swordsman of 16th century Japan, implies that he fought his greatest duels with his eyes crossed, and goes into considerable detail about developing and using this strange abitlity."

The method suggested to engage peripheral vision is to suspend an object from the bill of a baseball cap and practice staring at it rather than looking straight ahead as we all normally do.

The site has a page on the physiology of the eye and sight. It describes the normal field of vision.

http://www.navaching.com/hawkeen/nwalk.html#Anchor-The-59125

Institute for Innovative Blind Navigation

Don't let the site name put you off. This site has several pages which explain sight and how the brain deals with two vision systems.

http://www.wayfinding.net/index.htm

This page has the vision material.    http://www.wayfinding.net/vsionsys.htm#four

Speed Reading (peripheral vision)

http://www.ababasoft.com/wider_eye_span/

Vision, is a set of brain level subsystems

This page explains the M & P pathways and vision processing.

http://www.wayfinding.net/visanal.htm

The Red Myth

Color in Vision

http://stlplaces.com/night_vision.html

University of Missouri

The first paragraph on this page refers to psychological factors effecting pupil dilation.

"Interestingly, the pupil/iris combination also changes in response to psychological factors. One sign of activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is a system important in arousal, fight, and flight, is dilated pupils. For example, sexual interest results in pupil dilation. (This piece of information may come in handy some time.)"

http://web.umr.edu/~psyworld/eye.htm

 University of Utah

John Moran Eye Center --  Anatomy

http://webvision.med.utah.edu/

Kimball's Biology Pages 

A simple explanation of the eye and sight.

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/V/Vision.html

Understanding Human Vision

This site deals with color.

http://www.pitir.com/pentile/Human_Vision.html

Vision and the Brain

Block diagrams of vision paths through the brain explain the M and P channels.

 http://www.thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_02/i_02_cr/i_02_cr_vis/i_02_cr_vis.html#2

Study Notes Vision

http://www.utmed.com/studynotes/neuro/VisualProcessing.pdf

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Prevention:  This  section is now repeated at the bottom of most pages.

The rare occurrence of the injury establishes that is difficult to create enough exposure to cause an injury. But when it does happen the consequences are serious, possibly fatal.

 Our personal experience was intermittent human traffic during eight-hour workdays for thirty calendar days.

If you have a tower CPU mount it under your desk. That's the way they position it in a cubicle. The hard drive busy light is about the height of your low peripheral vision if you put the tower on the desk. Desktop reading of text or writing notes beside the keyboard on the side of the monitor away from the tower makes the blinking hard drive busy light appear to approach from behind when you turn to view the screen again.

If you have a computer work station/desk in which you turn ninety degrees to write or do other non computer work, turn off the monitor when you turn aside. Remove screen savers in this instance. The movement, animation for example, in your screensaver, two-dimensional movement, might well be detected by your peripheral vision at close range. Alternately cover the monitor screen.

All home, apartment, or dorm computer workstations are in unprotected workspace. To change that put the computer in a quiet room with no possible movement. If that is not possible in a dorm or apartment position the computer so that your peripheral vision can see only stationary walls as you use the computer in a busy room. In Cubicles and 'Systems Furniture' these protective features are achieved with peripheral vision blocking panels and corner seating positions. It is called 'Cubicle Level Protection.'

If you use computer or CD-ROM games for many hours day after day, the game playing position should follow the same rules as the computer workstation. Battery operated games will not run long enough on a single rechargeable battery to cause a risk for SPVP.

Although a laptop does not have a visible blinking light in peripheral vision the same rules apply to your work position.  There should not be human traffic moving to you from behind. There should be nothing behind you, which could enter your subliminal peripheral vision field as you turn your head while working at the laptop and be mistaken for threat movement.

Only movement coming from behind you into your Subliminal Peripheral Vision can cause a peripheral vision reflex. If the movement source approaches you from ahead then enters your Subliminal Peripheral Vision from conscious sight there can be no peripheral vision reflex.

Repeated for Emphasis:

A single session or rare sessions will not cause this problem.

It is the same day after day long hours of play or computer use with detectable movement in ‘Subliminal Peripheral Vision,’ which would form the basis of a risk for SPVP injury.

Exposure can be cumulative 

The brain’s detection system only evaluates movement. There is little recognition of the nature of the object in peripheral vision. If you have several hours exposure from human traffic at the library, while reading at an open table or seated in a reading room chair, followed by long hours watching TV with a critically misplaced ceiling fan sweeping detectable shadows around the room, the combination of those two behaviors might cause the problem. The suggestion is that either activity alone would not consume enough exposure time even if the critical movement is present.

Copyright 2003

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