Research article summary (published 30 Jul 2003):

Visual consciousness in health and disease.

Full Abstract

Conscious experience is an essential part of normal human life and interaction with the environment. Yet the nature of consciousness and conscious perception remains a mystery. Because of its subjective nature, consciousness has been difficult to investigate scientifically, but clues have been gained through studies involving patients with cortical lesions. During the past decade, the development of event-related fMRI has provided insights into aspects of conscious perception in control subjects and patients with cortical lesions by correlating awareness and performance with neural activity during visual tasks. This article reviews how recent research has advanced understanding of conscious perception, its relationship to neural activity and visual performance, and how this relationship can be altered by visual dysfunction. It also presents recent research about how conscious awareness of vision might be represented at a neural level in the central nervous system.

Author information

Author/s: Whatham, Andrew R (AR); Vuilleumier, Patrik (P); Landis, Theodor (T); Safran, Avinoam B (AB);

Affiliation: Neuro-ophthalmology Unit, Ophthalmology Clinic, Department of Clinical Neurosciences and Dermatology, Geneva University Hospitals, Rue Micheli-du-Crest, 1211 Geneva, 14 Switzerland.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Review

Journal: Neurologic clinics (Neurol Clin), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Aug; vol 21 (issue 3) : pp 647-86, vi

Dates: Created 2003/09/18; Completed 2003/11/04; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 13677817, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Attention - physiology Awareness - physiology Consciousness - physiology Corpus Callosum - surgery Dyslexia - physiopathology Functional Laterality - physiology Health Status Humans Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods Optical Illusions

Parietal Lobe - blood supply Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology Perceptual Disorders - physiopathology Perceptual Masking - physiology Prefrontal Cortex - blood supply Prosopagnosia - physiopathology Time Factors Unconscious (Psychology) Visual Perception - physiology Vocabulary

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