Visual Search Rehabilitation in Hemianopia

People with hemianopia often have problems finding things... 

The picture on the left shows why:
  The top part shows how someone with normal vision moves their eyes when counting dots on a screen. The black dots are where the eyes come to rest and the black lines show where the eye movements go.
  The bottom part shows someone with hemianopia (this is a particularly bad case). Eye movements are much smaller and miss their targets (the dots on the screen). They are very disorganised.

This shows why a lot of people with hemianopia have problems finding things in the fridge or on supermarket shelves for example.

Visual search rehabilitation aims to train people to move their eyes (and possibly their head) in order to find things more quickly.  This is a little bit different from scanning / saccadic training, which will be described in another post to this blog, though it may have similar effects.

There are a few visual search rehabilitation methods out there, which improve the speed at which people find things in artificial tasks, and may improve people's ability to look for things in real life.  Most of these are computer-based, though there's a nice bit of home-made kit in a German rehab centre:

This man is looking for a pattern of lights on a screen.  He's got his head on a chin rest to stop head movements.












If you don't want to build a big board with lights on it, you might want to look at a computer-based task.  EyeSearch is a **FREE** web-based rehab programme developed at University College London using a "Ramp-Step" method where a ball rolls across a screen then jumps.  You have to find where it jumped to.  It's designed to help people with hemianopia and/or neglect after brain injury.

This is a screenshot of EyeSearch.  Follow this link to the web site.  The web site is very user friendly with lots of videos.  The project is funded by the Stroke Association and developed by the same group that developed ReadRight training for reading problems due to hemianopia.










Another method was developed by Dr Alidz Pambakian and Prof Chris Kennard at Imperial College London.  You should be able to get a **FREE** copy of the rehab programme on DVD from Dr Stephen Hicks in Oxford.  It has the advantage that it can be used on a DVD player connected to a TV as well as a computer.  Please let me know if you can't get hold of it (email at the top of this blog).  Here's a picture of what it looks like.

You have to look for the odd one out on the screen.  In the top screen shot this is a small square amongst larger squares; in the bottom one it's a diamond among squares.  You've got a couple of seconds to find it before the programme moves on to the next one.  If you do this often enough you get quicker at it, and it might help you look for things in real life.  If you try it please let me know how you get on (email at the top of this blog).