Interfering with your vision makes it harder to describe what you know about the appearance of even common objects, according to new research.

Study participants were asked recall bits of visual information they know about specific objects. Half the time, they saw a blast of coloured static meant to disrupt the parts of the brain that process visual information. The static made a significant difference in their ability to recall the correct information, showing a connection between visual memory and the visual perception systems in the brain.

Visual interference selectively interrupted their ability to answer questions about the visual properties of objects. They had trouble trying to recall that kind of information. But it didn’t change how good they were at accessing what they knew about the nonvisual properties of the same objects.

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