Talk:Blindsight

Reviewer B

Minor comments and typos:

Section: Good visual performance without awareness in DB. Paragraph 1, Line 7: delete 'were', replace 'when' with 'were', and remove last full stop (period).

He was astonished when shown his results, as we were when Weiskrantz and Warrington were conducting the tests that demonstrated his impressive performance without awareness.

Section: DB and others. Paragraph 1, Line 3: delete 's' from 'transients'

It early became apparent, also, that rapid transient events, e.g., rapid movement or sudden onset/offsets, produced a "feeling" or "knowing" that some event had occurred even though it was not "seen".

Section: DB and others. Paragraph 2, Line 3: delete 'also has' and replace with 'have'.

Other subjects, e.g., GY, have also been studied by workers in several countries.

Section: Wilder interest and development. Paragraph 1, Line 2: delete 'the'

The phenomenon of visual capacity in the absence of acknowledged awareness became of interest to neuroscientists pursuing the burgeoning topic of consciousness and its possible neural basis.

Section: Beyond the baptism of fire. Paragraph 1, Line 3: insert 'they' after 'Also, it was suggested...', and insert 'have' after '...visual cortex damage may...'

Also, it was suggested they really did see but were reluctant to acknowledge it, such that in signal detection terms that they had a significant d= but a strongly biassed criterion (cf. Campion et al., 1983) or that the visual cortex damage may have been incomplete giving rise to scattered islands of intact function (Fendrich et al., 1992).

General comment:

I like this article very much. It combines general important issues with specific information very effectively. It is also excellent that Larry Weiskrantz and Elizabeth Warrington receive due credit.

Reviewer C

Minor revisions: History section: 4th line from end, (1974) (brackets). Also, was this in monkeys? last line please write 20 degrees (fonts not correct)

Good visual performance section: line 6, please delete "When were".

DB and others section: Sahraie et al. 2006 should be 2003

Varieties of blindsight section: second to last line, range of (5-33) Hz

Learning from pupil: please delete full stop in the last line

Wider interest and development: last line, should this be "by no means?" Also Michel 19800 should be 1980

General comment: This is an excellent overview of an exciting topic that has bridged Psychology, Philosophy and Neuroscience and has led to vigorous and informative inter-disciplinary debates. The evolution of this topic over the last few decades has been exhilarating and has only been possible due to Weiskrnatz's insight and careful experimentation.

Reference comment: I found that the reference "Cowey, A. and Stoerig, P. (1991). The neurobiology of blindsight. Trends in Neuroscience, 29, 65-80." is incorrect. The correct reference should be "Cowey, A. and Stoerig, P. (1991). The neurobiology of blindsight. Trends in Neuroscience, vol 14, no 4, 140-145."