Impaired Vision (eBook)

Edward de Haan is a distinguished neuropsychologist with both clinical and research appointments. He is Professor of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and has written more than 250 academic papers on vision, perception, memory, and consciousness, as well as on the impact of stroke, diabetes, and schizophrenia. He is President of the Federation for European Societies for Neuropsychology (2018-2019) and he has been an active member of the International Neuropsychological Society (INS) since the mid-1980s. He is an award-winning educator with more than 30 PhD students, many of whom are now also professors themselves.

Preface xi

1 Looking at the Brain 1

1.1 A Short History 1

1.2 The Brain 18

1.3 This Book and the Patients in It 23

2 Blind 29

2.1 A Blind Eye 29

2.2 A Blind Brain 34

2.3 Blind Visual Fields 39

2.4 Imagined Vision 41

3 Partially Blind 45

3.1 Where Is It? 46

3.2 Line Orientation 52

3.3 Seeing Stroboscopically 56

3.4 Shapelessness 58

3.5 A Black-and-White World 60

3.6 Rough and Matte or Smooth and Glossy 66

4 Looking but Not Seeing 71

4.1 Wavelength Without Color 71

4.2 Day or Night? 77

4.3 Seeing Without Reading and Strange Connections 82

4.4 What Is That? 87

4.5 Lost and an Unfamiliar House 95

4.6 Face Failures and a Family Affair 99

4.7 I Can't See Why You Sound Angry and Two Swiss Ladies 103

4.8 Classic Syndromes of the Parietal Lobe 108

5 Seeing Things Differently 113

5.1 Bringing Color to the World 113

5.2 Moldy Faces and Fish Heads 116

5.3 Dislodged Vision 125

5.4 Repetitive Vision 134

5.5 Lost Feelings 138

6 Seeing What Is Not There 143

6.1 Bright Sparks 143

6.2 Lively Perception in Poor Vision 150

6.3 Filling in the Empty Spaces 152

6.4 Neglected but Not Forgotten 156

6.5 Electrified Perceptions 159

6.6 Hallucinations Resulting from Degenerative Disease 163

6.7 Visual Hallucinations in Psychiatric Conditions 172

6.8 Strange Desires 184

7 Knowing the Unseen 187

7.1 Sight Unseen 187

7.2 Split Brain 196

7.3 Pointing in the Right Direction 202

7.4 Vision Without Awareness 209

7.5 Ignored but Not Forgotten 216

8 Oblivion 221

8.1 Seneca's Trouble 221

8.2 Anosognosia 226

8.3 Neglect Revisited 228

8.4 Lost Colors 229

8.5 My Oil Paintings 231

8.6 Forgetting Your Amnesia 235

9 Vision 241

9.1 Scope of the Visual Brain 242

9.2 Stages of Vision 246

9.3 Damage, Deficits, Distortions, and Delusions 251

9.4 Consciousness 254

9.5 Looking Back 256

Index 261