Localizing Visual Field Deficits

Contributed By

Mary Kate Worden

University of Virginia School of Medicine

Case Overview

This exercise consists of a powerpoint and a handout. The powerpoint depicts the visual world as seen through the eyes of six patients who have visual field deficits. Students are asked to identify the clinical term that describes each visual field deficit, and to identify the site(s) within the visual pathways where a lesion could cause each of the visual field deficits.

Anatomical Region and System

Presentation by Functional Systems

Target Audience

Additional Details

  • Level of Neuroanatomy Content: Intermediate
  • Average Activity Duration: 30 minutes
  • Adaptable for Online Learning: Yes
  • level of difficulty to implement this resource: easy

activity type

  • Illustration / Animation / Video
  • Individual activity
  • Large Group activity (define recommended group size in full description of activity)
  • Small Group activity (define recommended group size in full description of activity)

Learning Objectives

Given a patient with a visual field deficit, identify the clinical term that describes the deficit.

Given a visual field deficit, identify the site(s) along the visual pathway where a lesion could cause the deficit.

Student Preparatory Work

Students should be familiar with the neuroanatomy of the visual pathway, and the visual deficits that would result from a lesion in each of the following structures: the retina, the optic nerves, the optic chiasm, the optic tracts, the lateral geniculate nucleus, Meyer’s loop through the temporal lobe, and the visual cortex.

Additional Relevant Information

All students should have a copy of the worksheet to fill out as they view each of the slides in the powerpoint.  Students can do this exercise individually, as a small group (3-4 students) to allow for discussion before choosing each answer, or in a large group with discussion.  In my classroom I give students 15-20 minutes to work together on this exercise and then I go through it in large group format, calling on different groups to give their answers and confirming correct/incorrect answers.  The answer key for the worksheet is released after class as a study tool for students.

Licensing

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 License).

Peer Review Statement

This work has been vetted and accepted through the GNN peer-review process before publication.

Comments

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