Towards the neuronal correlate of visual awareness

Several encouraging developments towards identifying the neuronal correlate of visual awareness have emerged recently. Increasingly sophisticated behavioral paradigms permit the study of visual awareness in humans as well as in non-human primates. In patients with anatomically restricted lesions in striate and extrastriate cortex, highly informative deficits of visual awareness are observed. Similar deficits can be obtained in normal observers with a novel class of psychophysical displays. Taken together, these results suggest that the contents of visual awareness reflect neuronal activity in certain extrastriate, but not in striate, visual cortical areas.