Saturday, 10 November 2012

What hemianopic alexia looks like

Here are 2 YouTube videos showing how the eyes of 2 people move when reading 5 short words.  The red trace shows where the eyes are pointing. 

TOP: Person with normal vision.
BOTTOM: Person with right homonymous hemianopia (described below).


The person with normal vision (top) generally just looks at each word only once and can read them quickly. This video has been slowed down to compare with the other.
The person with loss of vision to the right of the midline (right homonymous hemianopia) takes a long time to read the words and looks at each word a number of times.  This is largely because this person can't use the right visual field to see where to send the eyes next.
For those of you who are interested, where the eyes stop briefly is a "fixation", and where they move rapidly is a "saccade".

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