Vision at the European Stroke Conference 2012

There are a couple of visual rehabilitation related sessions at the European Stroke Conference this year (see below).

Visit the conference web site by clicking here.  For more information, click here to see the programme e-book.

Thursday 24 May 2012
8:30 - 10:00 Oral Session. Rehabilitation and reorganisation after stroke A Auditorium III/IV
8:40 - 8:50
Recovery from Post-Stroke Visual Impairment: Evidence from the Virtual International Stroke Trials Archive (VISTA)
9:10 - 9:20
Microscopic damage to the left hemisphere contributes in determining neglect in patients with right hemispheric stroke.


Friday 25 May 2012
8:30 - 10:00 Academic Symposium 5 Auditorium VIII
Joint Symposium WFRN and ESC.  Does functional imaging help to plan stroke rehabilitation?
Early changes are relevant for recovery
R. Seitz, Germany
White matter tract changes and recovery
H. Chabriat, France
Brain organisation and reorganisation to understand neglect and extinction
C. Weiller, Germany
Alternative approaches to aphasia
G. Schlaug, USA

Train reading and exploration (visual search) separately

A recent paper published in the journal Brain, looking at rehabilitation of eye movements in hemianopia, has confirmed what already seemed to be the case from previous studies, that training reading helps reading but not visual exploration (visual search), while training visual exploration helps visual exploration but not reading.  The main thing about this study is that it was a "cross-over" study, that is it tried both types of rehabilitation in all the participants, but in a different order, to show that it wasn't just different people responding to different methods differently.

Click here for the article abstract.  The full article is only available to subscribers, I'm afraid.

The good news is that reputable examples of both types of rehabilitation are readily available, supported by evidence from small research studies, and FREE.  Reading training, developed by University College London,UK, is available on the ReadRight web site.  A visual search rehabilitation DVD is available from the University of Oxford, UK.  Contact Ms Toria Summers (PA to Professor Chris Kennard) - drop me a line if you have any problems getting hold of a copy.

Hemianopia Add-on for Firefox!

Believe it or not, there's a hemianopia add-on for Mozilla's excellent Firefox web browser. Hemianopia can sometimes cause problems finding the beginning of a line of text, so this add-on draws a vertical line on your Firefox web browser. By clicking and dragging, you can position it wherever is most helpful for your web page.  By double-clicking you can change it's colour or switch it off.  I'd be very interested to know how whether it's helpful.

The link is here: Firefox Hemianopia Add-on.
To get the Firefox browser, click This Link.

The add-on is produced by the Yahoo! Accessibility Lab.

UK Stroke Forum - Vision and Stroke Workshop

The provisional programme for the UK Stroke Forum has now been released.
A "Vision and Stroke Workshop", organised by the British and Irish Orthoptic Society is being held at 9-10:30 in the Alsh Room on 1st December. Talks to include:

09.00-09.20 Visual perception defects following stroke Deborah Parkinson (Teaching Lead and Stroke Specialist Orthoptist, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust)

09.20-09.50 Visual Problems and Driving Professor Chris Dickinson (Professor of Clinical Optometry, University of Manchester)

09.50-10.20 Recovery from Post-Stroke Visual Impairment: Evidence from a Clinical Trials Resource Dr Myzoon Ali (CSO Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Glasgow Caledonian University)

10.20-10.30 Panel Questions

For the full programme, Follow This Link.

Review of Transcranial Direct Durrent Stimulation in Chronic Stroke

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a simple way of directly electrically stimluating the surface of the brain, which seems to be able to increase or reduce how "excitable" (how easily activated by nerve cell inputs) the brain's cortex is.  The hope is that if done in the right way this might help recovery from or rehabilitation of stroke.  It makes a good alternative to transcranial magnetic stimulation, because it's cheaper and more comfortable, so it's being increasingly used.  We don't know for certain how it works yet, but GABA (the main chemical in the brain that is released by nerve cells and inhibits other nerve cells) and glutamate (the main chemical that is released by nerve cells and stimulates other nerve cells) seem to be involved.


This review by Charlotte Stagg in Oxford explains a bit about the use of tDCS in chronic stroke (that is, stroke that happened some time ago).  I'm afraid it's a bit "tech-y", but it's easier than reading the research articles!

Visuomotor Imagery for Neglect Rehabilitation

A group based in Heidelberg, Germany, has performed a pilot study using imagery of the neglected arm to treat visuospatial neglect.  They trained 15 patients for an hour a day for 3 weeks, and found that imagining using the neglected arm improved copying/ drawing tasks and enhanced sensation in the arm.

Follow this link to the PubMed abstract.

Citation: Disabil Rehabil. 2011;33(21-22):2033-2043. Epub 2011 Feb 24.

UK Stroke Forum 2011

The UK Stroke Forum runs from 29 November to 1 December 2011 (see www.ukstrokeforum.org).  Look out for the following session on vision after stroke:

1 December
09.00 – 10.30 Parallel session 3(e)
Alsh Room
Vision and Stroke Workshop
Chairs: Tracey Shipman (Royal Hallamshire Hospital) and Dr Fiona Rowe (Senior Lecturer, University of Liverpool).
Visual perception defects following stroke
Deborah Parkinson (Teaching Lead and Stroke Specialist Orthoptist, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust).
Visual Problems and Driving
Professor Christine Dickinson (Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester).
Recovery from Post-Stroke Visual Impairment: Evidence from a Clinical Trials Resource
Dr Myzoon Ali (CSO Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Glasgow Caledonian University).