Leading the way: collicular contributions to blindsight

In this issue, Sepe et al. (2026) show that after only 2 weeks' recovery from a unilateral lesion of primary visual cortex, macaques show evidence that they can make saccades towards targets in the contralesional visual field when target onset is cued. We propose that the superior colliculus is a strong candidate for the generation of these spared visual responses. We go on to suggest that measuring other components of the orienting response, namely activity in the neck and limb muscles during saccades or pointing movements, could provide confirmatory evidence for a collicular contribution to visual orienting movements in blindsight.