"An unprecedented book that discusses a decades long journey of understanding vision and visual impairment through working with patients with brain damage Edward de Haan, a noted clinical vision researcher for the last 35 years, explains how the healthy brain deals with visual information and reveals how he learned to appreciate what it means to be visually impaired. Through discussions of fascinating case studies, he shows that visual deficits are individually unique. Some patients perceive the world without color, some see objects in a distorted manner, whilst others will claim that they can still see although they are demonstrably blind. The author details his experiences with these patients to demonstrate the manner in which patient work is a unique and vital part of discovering how the brain processes visual information. In doing so, Impaired Vision offers a review of the clinical symptoms related to visual impairment and highlights that the patient study method has not lost any of its relevance in our increasingly high-tech world. This important book: Explores the various clinical phenomena in visual impairment after brain damage Demonstrates the effectiveness of the patient study method for understanding visual deficits after brain damage Contains comprehensive coverage of the variety of symptoms that are manifest in patients with visual impairment Includes compelling case studies of visually impaired patients Written for a general audience but of interest for students, researchers and clinicians, Impaired Vision contains fascinating case studies that offer an understanding of the symptoms that are associated with visuals deficits of brain damage"--"We now have modern research techniques to probe the function of different structures in the brain. Micro-electrodes allow us to register the activation of individual neurons in response to specific types of visual stimulation in the brains of animals. The more recently developed techniques of electroencephalogram and magnetic resonance scanning can show us where and when the human brain is active under well-specified circumstances.

Nobody denies that these new research methods are extremely informative and promising. However, the sound foundation of our knowledge about the visual brain is firmly based in the study of the effects of brain damage. This book endeavors to be a showcase for the "lesion-method" for studying vision, which demonstrates how the healthy brain deals with visual information"--.