Why Your Brain Ignores Plain Sight

You can be physically blind to things right in front of your eyes simply because you are focused elsewhere. This happens not because of vision problems, but because your brain discards unexpected data to save mental energy.

Your brain constantly filters out massive amounts of information to keep you from becoming overwhelmed. Famous experiments have shown that people often miss glaringly obvious objects, like a person in a costume, when they are counting basketball passes. This proves that perception is an active process of selection rather than a perfect recording of reality. When your focus is narrow, your brain essentially deletes what it deems irrelevant.