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Hemianopic visual field defects elicit hemianopic scanning
M L M Tant1, F W Cornelissen, A C Kooijman
1Department of Psychology, University of Groningen, Section Neuropsychology, University Hospital Groningen, Poortweg 4, 2de verdieping, P.O. Box 30.001, 9700 RB, Groningen, Netherlands. m.l.m.tant@ppsw.rug.nl
Abstract:
Previous explanations for the variability in success of compensating for homonymous hemianopia (HH) has been in terms of extent of the brain injury. In using on-line eye movement registrations, we simulated HH in 16 healthy subjects and compared their scanning performance on a dot counting task to their own "normal" condition and to real HH patients' performance. We evidenced clear parallels between simulated and real HH, suggesting that hemianopic scanning behaviour is primarily visually elicited, namely by the visual field defect, and not by the additional brain damage. We further observed age-related processes in compensating for the HH.