How to study subjective experience in an animal model of blindsight?
Xiyao Yu, Reona Yamaguchi, Tadashi Isa
Neuroscience Research April 2024 DOI: 10.1016/j.neures.2023.09.001 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Review Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Blindsight Monkey Saccade Subjective experience V1 lesion Visual awareness |
| Key findings | Argues that blindsight, in which primary visual cortex damage spares visual discrimination but impairs visual consciousness, is a privileged entry point for studying subjective experience, and that understanding its neural basis requires monkey as well as human work. The authors report that specially designed tasks reveal impaired visual awareness in blindsight monkeys and that many complex visually guided cognitive processes remain intact despite this impairment. |
Abstract
The nature of subjective conscious experience, which accompanies us throughout our waking lives, and how it is generated, remain elusive. One of the challenges in studying subjective experience is disentangling the brain activity related to the sensory stimulus processing and stimulus-guided behavior from those associated with subjective perception. Blindsight, a phenomenon characterized by the retained visual discrimination performance but impaired visual consciousness due to damage to the primary visual cortex, becomes a special entry point to address this question. However, to fully understand the underlying neural mechanism, relying on studies involving human patients alone is insufficient. In this paper, we tried to address this issue, by first introducing the well-known cases of blindsight, especially the reports on subjective experience in both human and monkey subjects. And then we described how the impaired visual awareness of blindsight monkeys has been discovered and further studied by specifically designed tasks, as verbal reporting is not possible for these animals. Our previous studies also demonstrated that many complex visually guided cognitive processes were still retained despite the impairment of visual awareness. Further investigation needs to be conducted to explore the relationship between visually guided behavior, visual awareness and brain activity in blindsight subjects.