3. What is ‘blindsight’? What are its implications for our understanding of how vision works? (You will especially need to consult other chapters in this book, and other sources of information – see, for example, the work over the past 25 years of Weiskrantz – in order to address this question thoroughly.)

Key Points:

• A definition and overview of blindsight (as presented in this chapter).
• Consideration of the extent to which the occurrence of the blindsight phenomenon provides insight into the way the visual system operates under normal (i.e. non brain-damaged) circumstances.
• Extra credit received for the student’s reasoned consideration of the extent to which the study of an aberrant system, such as the damaged visual system, provides enhanced insight into the functional characteristics of that system.
• Credit also given for more detailed consideration of the mechanisms underlying blindsight obtained from wider reading; for example, the extent to which blindsight might represent a phenomenon of ‘diffused light and spared cortex’ – as suggested by Campion and Latto, among others; and the extent to which the phenomenon of blindsight provides evidence for a parallel stream of visual information processing.
• Additional credit awarded for evidence of wider reading, as instructed.