Cortical Blindness: What This Means for Your Eye Health

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This type of blindness is a disorder where damage to the brain prevents normal vision. With this condition, you may experience varying degrees of sight. Total improvement is not guaranteed, even with therapy.

Cortical vision impairment (CVI) is the leading cause of vision loss among children in the United States. These types of vision problems occur due to processing problems in the brain, not defects in the eyes themselves.

While CVI is less frequently seen in adults, the condition can affect individuals of all ages. Getting a proper CVI diagnosis can be difficult, but it opens doors for visual rehabilitation and support options.

This article will explain what cortical blindness is, why it’s more common in children, and how it can be diagnosed so that you can receive proper treatment and management.

CVI is a condition where the brain has trouble processing and understanding signals sent from the eyes.

Those with CVI have difficulty seeing for reasons that can’t be explained by problems with the eyes. It’s also sometimes called cerebral visual impairment.

Normally, the eyes send electrical signals to the brain, which are turned into the images you see. However, depending on where the brain has been affected, people with CVI may have loss of vision, dimness of vision, or a defect in their visual field.

Incomplete cortical blindness is much more common than complete blindness.

Signs of CVI in young children can include:

• distinct color preferences
• preferences for looking at lights and the sun (or they may be extremely sensitive to light)
• problems recognizing faces or objects
• difficulty with unfamiliar visual stimuli
• preferences for certain head positions when viewing objects

Adults with CVI may have:

• better vision when viewing moving objects as opposed to stationary objects
• a delayed visual response
• better visual responses for near objects than for distant objects
• difficulty with complex visual groupings and environments
• other disabilities like cerebral palsy, epilepsy, or hearing loss