Do You Know How a Brain Injury Could Affect Your Visual Skills?

Vision Skills Impacted by Traumatic Brain Injury

There are numerous skills that go into the vision system enabling us to see properly. Many of these can be negatively impacted by a traumatic brain injury. Some of these can impact the mechanical functions of the eyes, while others are related strictly to the brain-eye connection through which information received by our eyes is interpreted by the brain.

• Depth Perception: This is the ability for one to accurately judge the distances between objects, and how far away an object is.

• Eye Tracking: Eye tracking is the ability of the eyes to smoothly move across a page while reading or to follow a moving object.

• Peripheral Vision: Peripheral vision is essentially our side vision, what we see on the sides while looking straight ahead. The vision skill of peripheral vision is the ability to monitor and interpret what is in our field of vision.

• Vision Perception: This is the general ability to quickly understand and process what we are seeing.

• Fixation: The ability to accurately and quickly locate and inspect series of stationary objects (such as words on a page.)

• Binocularity (eye tracking and teaming): This set of skills is what allows us to use our eyes together as an effective team.

• Visualization: An often overlooked component of vision, this is what enables us to accurately picture an image in the “mind’s eye”, along with retaining and storing this information in our memory for future use.

• Focus Change (accomodation): The ability to rapidly shift focus from far to near objects repeatedly.

• Near Vision Acuity: The ability to clearly see, identify, inspect, and properly understand objects which are within arm’s length.

• Distance Acuity: The ability to clearly see, identify, inspect, and properly understand objects which are far away.

• Vision Perception: The ability to quickly process and understand what is being seen.
• Maintaining Attention: The ability to maintain one’s focus on a specific activity despite nearby interference (such as noise or motion) is present.