Look before you leap? Grasping blindsight.

Authors

Marina A Pavlova

Published in

Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991). Volume 36. Issue 9. Sep 01, 2026.

Abstract

Blindsight is an intriguing phenomenon, in which individuals with damage to the primary visual cortex can adequately respond to visual targets, even though they insist on little or absent awareness of their visual experience. Several questions arise in this context: (i) Is awareness a necessary prerequisite for adaptive and flexible behavior? (ii) Does the phenomenon of blindsight actually exist, or is it a wordplay and rather a matter of residual vision or a peculiar form of seeing? (iii) Do we possess suitable tools for capturing reliable subjective reports and behavioral responses? This is a long-standing yet still highly relevant methodological challenge. (iv) Not to be overlooked, the neural basis of blindsight has not yet been sufficiently elucidated. The matter becomes even more complex when one considers the remarkable potential of the brain for reorganization. Is it, after all, a wise view that one should look before taking the leap?

PMID:
42831679
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 05 Oct 2026.

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