Dissociation between goal-directed and discrete response localization in a patient with bilateral cortical blindness

Simona Buetti, Marco Tamietto, Alexis Hervais-Adelman, Dirk Kerzel, Beatrice de Gelder, Alan J. Pegna

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We investigated localization performance of simple targets in patient TN, who suffered bilateral damage of his primary visual cortex and shows complete cortical blindness. Using a twoalternative forced-choice paradigm, TN was asked to guess the position of left-right targets with goal-directed and discrete manual responses. The results indicate a clear dissociation between goal-directed and discrete responses. TN pointed toward the correct target location in approximately 75% of the trials but was at chance level with discrete responses. This indicates that the residual ability to localize an unseen stimulus depends critically on the possibility to translate a visual signal into a goaldirected motor output at least in certain forms of blindsight.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1769-1775
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of cognitive neuroscience
Volume25
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2013

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Cognitive Neuroscience

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