Damage to the primary visual cortex causes loss of conscious vision, yet some patients retain the ability to respond to stimuli despite reporting no visual experience. Why similar lesions produce such different behavioral phenotypes remains unclear. While research to date has focused primarily on spared pathways that bypass V1, here we asked whether these divergent outcomes are also linked to...
The phenomenon of blindsight provides a unique opportunity to uncover brain areas important for conscious vision. Patients with blindsight lose the conscious experience of seeing while still being able to detect and locate visual stimuli. Blindsight occurs after damage to the primary visual cortex (V1). Rodents are likewise able to detect and locate visual stimuli after damage to V1, though...