Kupers Ron, Pietrini Pietro, Ricciardi Emiliano, Ptito Maurice
Institute of Neuroscience and Pharmacology, Panum Institute, University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark.
Front Psychol. 2011 Feb 14;2:19. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00019. eCollection 2011.
Vision plays a central role in how we represent and interact with the world around us. The primacy of vision is structurally imbedded in cortical organization as about one-third of the cortical surface in primates is involved in visual processes. Consequently, the loss of vision, either at birth or later in life, affects brain organization and the way the world is perceived and acted upon. In this paper, we address a number of issues on the nature of consciousness in people deprived of vision. Do brains from sighted and blind individuals differ, and how? How does the brain of someone who has never had any visual perception form an image of the external world? What is the subjective correlate of activity in the visual cortex of a subject who has never seen in life? More in general, what can we learn about the functional development of the human brain in physiological conditions by studying blindness? We discuss findings from animal research as well from recent psychophysical and functional brain imaging studies in sighted and blind individuals that shed some new light on the answers to these questions.
视觉在我们如何呈现周围世界以及与周围世界互动方面起着核心作用。视觉的首要地位在结构上嵌入于皮层组织中，因为灵长类动物约三分之一的皮层表面参与视觉过程。因此，无论是出生时还是生命后期丧失视力，都会影响大脑组织以及人们感知世界和对世界采取行动的方式。在本文中，我们探讨了一些关于失明者意识本质的问题。有视力者和失明者的大脑有何不同，以及如何不同？从未有过任何视觉感知的人的大脑如何形成外部世界的图像？从未见过东西的受试者视觉皮层活动的主观对应物是什么？更一般地说，通过研究失明，我们能了解到人类大脑在生理条件下的功能发育情况？我们讨论了来自动物研究以及近期针对有视力者和失明者的心理物理学和功能性脑成像研究的结果，这些研究为这些问题的答案提供了一些新的线索。
