posted on 2020-11-11, 15:20authored byMelvyn Alan Goodale
Lawrence (Larry) Weiskrantz, widely recognized as one of the world's leading
researchers in cognitive neuroscience, was professor and head of the Department of
Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford from 1967 until his retirement in 1993.
Under his leadership, the department became, and continues to be, one of the world's leading
centres for research in cognitive neuroscience. While at Oxford, he led a series of
ground-breaking neuropsychological studies of residual cognitive and behavioural processing
in patients with amnesia and cortical blindness. It was his demonstration of residual, but
unconscious, visually-driven behaviour in patients who were clinically blind from damage to
primary visual cortex that is his greatest legacy. He coined the now familiar term
‘Blindsight’ to refer to this remarkable ability. This work established Larry as a leader in
research on unconscious processing, showing that operations from the control of action to
high-level cognitive functions can unfold without conscious awareness. Because of his
pioneering work, the study of the neural substrates of unconscious cognitive processes is
now an essential and prominent part of the cognitive neuroscience enterprise
worldwide.