- Blindsight demonstrates responses to visual targets without reported awareness, challenging whether awareness is necessary for adaptive, flexible behaviour.
- Debate remains whether blindsight reflects genuine unconscious vision, residual sight, or atypical perceptual experience requiring clearer definitions.
- Methodological limits in subjective report and behaviour, plus unclear neural mechanisms and brain reorganisation, hinder full understanding of blindsight.
Cereb Cortex. 2026 Sep 1;36(9):bhag151. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhag151.
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 | DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhag151
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