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Prime-sight in a blindsight subject

Nature Neuroscience volume 5, pages 101–102 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

A subject (D.B.) who had no experience of visual stimuli in a field defect caused by visual cortex damage but could discriminate them ('blindsight') nevertheless reported visible after-images of the stimuli when they were turned off ('prime-sight'). This was investigated using projected visual stimuli of varying colors, contrasts, shapes and spatial frequencies, and by measuring the properties of the after-images, including their duration, size scaling, color and interocular transfer, comparing the capacity of the blindsight and prime-sight modes. These phenomena offer a unique opportunity to compare conscious and unconscious neural events in response to the same visual events.

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Figure 1: Size of the after-images projected onto a white screen at varying distances.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by Medical Research Council Grant G971/387/B and by a network grant from the McDonnell–Pew Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Oxford, UK. We thank J. Byrne, Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, for arranging and reading high-resolution CT scans.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3UD, UK

    Lawrence Weiskrantz, Alan Cowey & Iona Hodinott-Hill

Authors
  1. Lawrence Weiskrantz
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  2. Alan Cowey
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  3. Iona Hodinott-Hill
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lawrence Weiskrantz.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Weiskrantz, L., Cowey, A. & Hodinott-Hill, I. Prime-sight in a blindsight subject. Nat Neurosci 5, 101–102 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn793

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