Stumbling on Happiness: An insightful neuroscience self-help psychology book on cognitive enhancement and human behavior

by Daniel Todd Gilbert

For example, people who suffer from the condition known as blindsight have no awareness of seeing, and will truthfully tell you that they are completely blind.11 Brain scans lend credence to their claims by revealing diminished activity in the areas normally associated with awareness of visual experience. On the other hand, the same scans reveal relatively normal activity in the areas associated with vision.12 So if we flash a light on a particular spot on the wall and ask the blindsighted person if she saw the light we just flashed, she tells us, ‘No, of course not. As you might infer from the presence of the guide dog, I’m blind.’ But if we ask her to make a guess about where the light might have appeared -just take a stab at it, say anything, point randomly if you like–she ‘guesses’ correctly far more often than we would expect by chance. She is seeing, if by seeing we mean experiencing the light and acquiring knowledge about its location, but she is blind, if by blind we mean that she is not aware of having seen. Her eyes are projecting the movie of reality on the little theatre screen in her head, but the audience is in the lobby getting popcorn.