Denial+of+Blindness

People with cortical blindness (such as following massive lesions of the visual cortex) seem initially quite confused, indifferent regarding their condition, and report a variety of hallucinatory experiences which may be complex or elementary in form. Moreover, frequently these patients will initially deny they are blind --a condition referred to as Anton's syndrome.

That is, these patients confabulate. These confabulatory abnormalties are sometimes due to a disconnection such that the Language Axis, failing to receive information from the visual cortex (i.e. that it cannot see), responds instead to associations from intact areas which concern "seeing". That is, the Language Axis does not know that it is blind because information concerning blindness is not being received from the proper neural channels.

It is also possible that these individuals deny being blind, because subcortically they are still able to see. Hence, although at a neocortical level there is no sight, subcortically there remains an unconscious awareness of the visual world.