What happens when your occipital lobe is damaged?

You may have heard of traumatic brain injuries that could damage different areas of the brain responsible for various functions in our body. One such region is the occipital lobe, which if injured, can lead to a plethora of vision-related problems, including partial or total loss of sight. In this article, we will explore what happens when your occipital lobe is damaged and delve into its associated symptoms.

Anatomy 101: The Occipital Lobe

To understand how an injury to the occipital lobe affects us, it’s crucial to first familiarize ourselves with its specifics. The occipital lobe, located at the backmost part of our cerebrum (brain), processes visual information from our retinas sent through our optic nerves. It contains several regions known as Brodmann Areas (BA) responsible for processing different aspects of vision.

  • BA17/primary visual cortex focuses on basic shape recognition.
  • BA18/secondary visual cortex recognizes more specific shapes.
  • BA19/processes faces and risk perception
  • Lingual gyri – process colors
    These subdivisions cover over 30% of your human cortex relating mainly to receiving inputs primarily from V1/Cortex and then interpreting visuals accordingly as additional data become available(BA19).

Effects Of Damage To Your Occipital Lobe

While a single area being damaged might cause limited issues related to identifying certain objects or recognizing colors, full-scale damage even due to a stroke has severe consequences – resulting in blindness ranging from an inability in recognizing objects fully up-to no ability whatsoever(akineto). Here are few other areas where people experience impacts after suffering damage:

Loss Of Sight & Visual Acuity

The main symptom associated with any sort of occipi-interruptus would be alterations within one’s sense(s)^(God I miss Blazing Saddles). Specifically, with the occipital lobe responsible for visual processing (signal interpretation), it’s likely any impact there will affect sight. The impact of being unable to see shapes and forms correctly is akin to experiencing a stroke disrupting one’s way of life. Hence injury resulting in V1 activity decrease can result in a wider range of disorders, including without limitation:

  • Scotomas – A vision defect causing objects appearing blurred or appear missing from the full field of view.
  • Homonymous/heteronymous hemianopia – When damage results in blindness on just one side(right/left) , where only half portion(either vertically dividing image 50/50 or part-way up deponding BN severity)of each varying individual’s instance(from angling themselves to that specific area.).
  • Object Agnosia/Alexia – Difficulties recognizing objects or reading(think: difficulty along naming common household common items not becouse you don’t know them but because when sought after theres no clear picture)
    Among other minor(ie seeing spots/flashes/lights, problems distinguishing colors etc).

Visual Hallucinations

An intriguing effect linked with occipital lobe damage is the possibility of experiencing hallucinations regarding perceptions backed by essentially nothing visual stimuli-wise^(or perhaps caffeine intake). These could manifest as simple flashes(patches/blobs/etc.), complex patterns/shapes/moving visuals , texturable elements such as linespatterns/splotches/mottlings are falling under Charles Bonnet Syndrome categories(IORR10.1097/WCO.0b013e32832a3d6a) . While these visions should typically fade away on their own over time, some instances may persist.

Alongside putting forward new ideas related to consciousness studies and phantom limbs(Bachmann2000PlasticityAI), we can’t help but wonder whether all those dream-like shapes/cartoons popping in our heads while taking a quick nap can be attributed to occipital hallucinations?

Color agnosia/Color blindness

Due to specific injury to the lingual gyrus,an individual may experience trouble in distinguishing or recognizing certain colors. This condition isn’t tagged as total color blindness; instead, it’s known as color agnosia^(not that your next arts and crafts will require diagnosis). If affected by this particular issue, people might incorrectly identify conventional color names or put them where they shouldn’t be-and yes one’s POV could change due to photographic variables such as lighting.

Other Issues

While rare occasions occur with more severe injuries resulting in seizures at times(this also happens after hematoma removal), there are other sights noted alongside these damages. One of note is Balint Syndrome(BS!); being unable to see an entire field of vision – essentially chaos rather than focusing on any visual aspects (such reading/writing etc) and then report back discrepancies w/in contrast/up-each side equally flawed.

To end off: While experiencing damage leading up-to full losses should send us into a primal panic(there would obviously be some worries about what makes up ‘you’), all we must remind ourselves is that adaptation exists throughout history. Sufferers start adjusting themselves according given time-granted access and modifications-just like people having sight from birth going increasingly far beyond what traditional tests marking 20:20 vision signify lies well within-the realm of possibility… 🙂

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