Neurology of Vision and Visual Disorders, Volume 178 in the Handbooks of Neurology series provides comprehensive summaries of recent research on the brain and nervous system. This volume reviews alterations in vision that stem from the retina to the cortex. Coverage includes content on vision and driving derived from the large amount of time devoted in clinics to determining who is safe to drive, along with research on the interplay between visual loss, attention and strategic compensations that may determine driving suitability. The title concludes with vision therapies and the evidence behind these approaches.

Each chapter is co-written by a basic scientist collaborating with a clinician to provide a solid underpinning of the mechanisms behind the clinical syndromes.

Author Information

Jason Barton obtained his MD from the University of British Columbia in 1984, where
he completed a neurology residency in 1990. He was a fellow in neuro-ophthalmology at the University of Iowa from 1990 to 1991 and the University of Toronto from 1991 to 1995, and obtained his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1996. He was assistant and then associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, and director of neuro-ophthalmology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center from 1996 to 2004. Since 2004 he has been director of clinical neuro-ophthalmology at Vancouver General Hospital. He is currently professor, Canada Research Chair and Marianne Koerner Chair in Brain Diseases, in neurology, ophthalmology and visual sciences, and psychology at the University of British Columbia. His research is focused on cortical processing of vision, in particular high-level object perception, such as face and word recognition, and also on the use of saccadic eye movements to explore issues of cognitive control. I am Professor of Cognitive Neurology and a Consultant Neurologist at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology. My main clinical and academic interest is in cognitive rehabilitation, especially in the field of acquired language disorders and vision. I am developing mechanistic accounts of how cognitive disorders can be improved by different types of therapy -mainly behavioural- using functional and structural brain imaging.

I have developed three web-based rehabilitation tools that can be used to by therapists and patients with hemianopia or reading problems, and am working on four other electronic therapy projects sponsored by the MRC, NIHR and The Stroke Association. I think that web-based applications are a good way to make scientifically proven behavioural therapies available to suitable patients and their therapists.

At the UCLH National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery I have a specialist out-patient MDT assessment clinic for patients with hemianopia and/or higher disorders of vision. I also help run the Queen Square Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Programme.


1. A review of diseases of the retina for neurologists
2. Amblyopia
3. Retinal ganglion cells and the magnocellular, parvocellular, and koniocellular subcortical visual pathways from the eye to the brain
4. Perimetry and visual field defects
5. Electrophysiology in neuro-ophthalmology
6. The role of optical coherence tomography in the diagnosis of afferent visual pathway problems: A neuroophthalmic perspective
7. The striate cortex and hemianopia
8. Color vision
11. Object recognition and visual object agnosia
10. Prosopagnosia and disorders of face processing
11. The relationship between mental and physical space and its impact on topographical disorientation
12. Reading and alexia
13. Balint syndrome
14. Motion perception and its disorders
15. Aphantasia: The science of visual imagery extremes
16. Blindsight
17. Illusions, hallucinations, and visual snow
18. Vision, attention, and driving
19. Rehabilitation of visual disorders