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Published on: September 18, 2012
Speeded manual responses to unseen visual stimuli in hemianopic patients: what kind of blindsight?
Alessia Celeghin1, Marissa Barabas2, Francesca Mancini3
1Department of Neurological and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy; Department of Psychology, University of Torino, Torino, Italy; Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, and CoRPS - Center of Research on Psychology in Somatic diseases - Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Abstract:
Blindsight, i.e., unconscious visually guided behaviour triggered by stimuli presented to a cortically blind hemifield, has been typically found either by using direct (forced choice) or indirect (interhemispheric) methods. However, one would expect to find blindsight also in fast responses to suddenly appearing visual stimuli, a reminiscence of evolutionary ancient adaptive behaviour. In this study we provide preliminary evidence of this form of blindsight by using a conservative method for assessing blindsight based on a comparison between the cumulative probability functions (CPFs) of simple reaction times to blind and intact field stimuli. Furthermore, in two patients with blindsight we provided evidence that their above-chance unconscious responses were likely to be triggered by the intact hemisphere.
