It ranks among the most curious phenomena in cognitive neuroscience. A handful of people in the world have \u201cblindsight\u201d: they are blind, but their non-conscious brain can still sense their surroundings.<\/p>\n
Milina Cunning, from Wishaw in Scotland, lost her sight in her 20s, and later realised she had this blindsight ability. She has been studied extensively by researchers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I was to throw a ping pong ball at Milina\u2019s head, she would probably raise her arm and duck out of the way, even before she had any awareness of it,\u201d says Jody Culham, a scientist who has scanned Cunning\u2019s brain.<\/p>\n
So what is it like to navigate the world in Milina\u2019s shoes? Here, she describes the sensation in her own words:<\/p>\n
\u201cI went into hospital as sighted person. I was put into an induced coma because of all the health problems I had. And I was in the coma for 52 days. When I woke up, I saw completely black. I couldn\u2019t see a thing. They said while I was in the coma I had a stroke which left me blind.”<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the months, thing started to change. Within six months, I thought I was seeing some colour but nobody really believed me. So I was put in contact with a neurologist, professor Gordon Dutton. And as soon as I saw him, he knew straight away, he confirmed that I had blindsight.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I went to see Dutton, there were quite a few tests he wanted to do. One of them was: he placed chairs out in the corridor in the hospital. He asked me to walk through the chairs. He said: \u2018Just walk through at your normal walking pace.\u2019 I walked my normal pace, and I kept bumping into them. So I got to the other end of the corridor, and he said: \u2018Right, now try and walk a bit faster now and go back through them.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I walked faster, and I just went through them, one by one, and I didn\u2019t hit them once. And it was just amazing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way Dutton explained it was \u2018Don\u2019t think about it too much, just go and do it. Don\u2019t think too much in your mind.\u2019 It was my subconscious mind telling me how to do that task and to avoid hitting the chairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can walk around the house ok, and tidy things up. But I can\u2019t see them. I know they\u2019re there. My brain is telling me. It\u2019s the same if the family have left things lying in the middle of the living room floor. I say \u2018you need to tidy up, so I don\u2019t trip over these things\u2019. If there is something lying there, like a handbag or shoes, I can see it and I miss it, or I go to pick it up.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019ll try to look at you, and I know you\u2019re sitting there, sitting close\u2026 but I just can\u2019t see you.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s strange the things I can see but I\u2019m not meant to see because I\u2019m blind.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It ranks among the most curious phenomena in cognitive neuroscience. A handful of people in the world have \u201cblindsight\u201d: they are blind, but their non-conscious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":932,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,295,308],"class_list":["post-931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-body","tag-blind","tag-blindsight","tag-sight","tag-strange"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}