Action-blindsight in healthy subjects after transcranial magnetic stimulation

Clinical cases of blindsight have shown that visually guided movements can be accomplished without conscious visual perception. Here, we show that blindsight can be induced in healthy subjects by using transcranial magnetic stimulation over the visual cortex. Transcranial magnetic stimulation blocke...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2008-01, Vol.105 (4), p.1353-1357
Main Authors: Christensen, Mark Schram, Kristiansen, Lasse, Rowe, James B, Nielsen, Jens Bo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Biological Sciences
Brain research
Consciousness
Experimental psychology
Experimentation
Functional Laterality - physiology
Humans
Movement perception
Neurons
Neurosciences
Perceptual experiences
Photic Stimulation
Sensory perception
Trajectories
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Visual cortex
Visual Cortex - physiology
Visual Fields - physiology
Visual Pathways - physiology
Visual perception
Visual Perception - physiology
Visual stimulation
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Summary:Clinical cases of blindsight have shown that visually guided movements can be accomplished without conscious visual perception. Here, we show that blindsight can be induced in healthy subjects by using transcranial magnetic stimulation over the visual cortex. Transcranial magnetic stimulation blocked the conscious perception of a visual stimulus, but subjects still corrected an ongoing reaching movement in response to the stimulus. The data show that correction of reaching movements does not require conscious perception of a visual target stimulus, even in healthy people. Our results support previous results suggesting that an efference copy is involved in movement correction, and this mechanism seems to be consistent even for movement correction without perception.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0705858105