Rehabilitation of Visual Disorders After Brain Injury

About twenty percent of patients with acquired brain injury suffer from visual deficits; the examination and treatment of these patients therefore represents a particular challenge in its own right. Furthermore, adequate visual perception is a crucial prerequisite for almost all cognitive and motor activities. Despite a long research tradition in visual neuroscience, the rehabilitation of cerebral visual deficits has, until recently, been neglected. This book is the first to report systematic observations on spontaneous recovery of cerebral visual deficits after acquired brain injury, and the outcome of treating these deficits. The whole range of human visual functions and capacities is covered: visual field, visual acuity and contrast sensitivity, visual adaptation, color vision, visual space perception, and visual cognition. Additionally, there is a special section devoted to patients with central scotoma. All treatment procedures described are empirically founded. This highly innovative contributionto neuropsychological rehabilitation shows that the study of restitution and compensation of impaired and lost brain functions represents a unique opportunity to increase our understanding of brain plasticity. Of interest to both the practitioner and the scientist, it aims to stimulate further developments and improvements in the field.