Brain, Vol. 126, No. 2, 265-266,
February 2003
© 2003 Guarantors of Brain
doi: 10.1093/brain/awg023
Editorial |
Mind—the gap, after 65 years: visual conditioning in cortical blindness
1 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK
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In the 1937 issue of Brain, an article appeared by Donald Marquis and Ernest Hilgard on the effects of total (and histologically confirmed) bilateral removal of striate cortex in six monkeys: ‘... The monkey seemed completely blind ... The threat reflex was permanently abolished and no evidence of object vision was ever seen in any of the animals’ (p. 4) (Marquis and Hilgard, 1937
). The methodology of classical conditioning of the eyelid response in animals and humans was already well developed by that time. In this paradigm a light signal serves as the conditioned stimulus for the unconditioned blast of air to the eyeball, and in association elicits a closure of the eyelid. These authors realised that, notwithstanding the
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