Preserved brain hierarchy supports residual vision without awareness after visual cortex damage
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) September 1, 2026 Davide Orsenigo, Andrea I. Luppi, Matteo Diano et al. preprint
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...