Cortical blindness is the total or partial loss of vision in a normal-appearing eye caused by damage to the brains occipital cortex. Cortical blindness can be acquired or congenital, and may also be transient in certain instances. Acquired cortical blindness is most often caused by loss of blood flow to the occipital cortex from either unilateral or bilateral posterior cerebral artery blockage (ischemic stroke) and by cardiac surgery. In most cases, the complete loss of vision is not permanent and the patient may recover some of their vision (cortical visual impairment). Congenital cortical blindness is most often caused by perinatal ischemic stroke, encephalitis, and meningitis. Rarely, a patient with acquired cortical blindness may have little or no insight that they have lost vision, a phenomenon known as Anton–Babinski syndrome. Cortical blindness and cortical visual impairment (CVI), which refers to the partial loss of vision caused by cortical damage, are both classified as subsets of neurological visual impairment (NVI). NVI and its three subtypes—cortical blindness, cortical visual impairment, and delayed visual maturation—must be distinguished from ocular visual impairment in terms of their different causes and structural foci, the brain and the eye respectively. One diagnostic marker of this distinction is that the pupils of individuals with cortical blindness will respond to light whereas those of individuals with ocular visual impairment will not.
Symptoms
The most common symptoms of acquired and transient cortical blindness include:

A complete loss of visual sensation and of vision
Preservation/sparing of the abilities to perceive light and/or moving, but not static objects (Riddoch syndrome)
A lack of visual fixation and tracking 
Denial of visual loss (Anton–Babinski syndrome)
Visual hallucinations 
Macular sparing, in which vision in the fovea is spared from the blindness. Causes
The most common cause of cortical blindness is ischemia (oxygen deprivation) to the occipital lobes caused by blockage to one or both of the posterior cerebral arteries. However, other conditions have also been known to cause acquired and transient cortical blindness, including:

Congenital abnormalities of the occipital lobe
Head trauma to the occipital lobe of the brain
Bilateral lesions of the primary visual cortex
Infection
Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), in association with a rapid onset of dementia
rarely Dissociative identity disorder (DID)
Side effect of some anti-epilepsy drugs (AEDs)
Hyperammonemia
Eclampsia and, rarely, pre-eclampsiaThe most common causes of congenital cortical blindness are:

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) to the occipital lobe of the brain
Congenital abnormalities of the occipital lobe
Perinatal ischemia
Encephalitis
Meningitis

Diagnosis
A patient with cortical blindness has no vision but the response of his/her pupil to light is intact (as the reflex does not involve the cortex). Therefore, one diagnostic test for cortical blindness is to first objectively verify the optic nerves and the non-cortical functions of the eyes are functioning normally. This involves confirming that patient can distinguish light/dark, and that his/her pupils dilate and contract with light exposure. Then, the patient is asked to describe something he/she would be able to recognize with normal vision.