Here they examined the neural processing of meaningful (words) and meaningless (consonant string) stimuli both when attended to, and when these same items were unattended. While no difference in activation patterns were found between the groups when the stimuli were unattended, differences in neural processing were observed for meaningful versus meaningless stimuli to which participants overtly attended. This pattern of results suggests that ignored stimuli are not processed to the level of meaning, i.e. less extensively than attended stimuli. Participants do not seem to be detecting meaning in stimuli to which they are not consciously attending. Some visual input information is only available in the primary visual cortex (V1) and not visible to visual awareness. One such information is regarding which eye sees which visual inputs. However, this information has been observed to guide attentional or gaze shifts, indicating a selection at the very first stage when visual inputs enter visual cortex. This information about the eye of origin of visual inputs is then deleted by V2, right after V1 along the visual pathway, since V2 neurons' responses to visual inputs do not depend on from which eye the visual inputs come from. Theories Perceptual load This particular hypothesis bridges the gap between the early and late selection theories. Authors integrate the viewpoint of early selection stating that perception is a limited process (i.e. cognitive resources are limited), and that of the late selection theories assuming perception as an automatic process. This view proposes that the level of processing which occurs for any one stimulus is dependent on the current perceptual load. That is, if the current task is attentionally demanding and its processing exhausts all the available resources, little remains available to process other non-target stimuli in the visual field. Alternatively, if processing requires a small amount of attentional resources, perceptual load is low and attention is inescapably directed to the non-target stimuli. The effects of perceptual load on the occurrence of inattentional blindness is demonstrated in a study by Fougnie and Marois. Here, participants were asked to complete a memory task involving either the simple maintenance of verbal stimuli, or the rearrangement of this material, a more cognitively demanding exercise. While subjects were completing the assigned task, an unexpected visual stimulus was presented. Results revealed that unexpected stimuli were more likely to be missed during manipulation of information than in the more simple rehearsal task. In a similar