TY - JOUR T1 - Visual training of cerebral blindness patients gradually enlarges the visual field JF - British Journal of Ophthalmology JO - Br J Ophthalmol SP - 88 LP - 96 DO - 10.1136/bjo.2008.154336 VL - 94 IS - 1 AU - D P Bergsma AU - G van der Wildt Y1 - 2010/01/01 UR - http://bjo.bmj.com/content/94/1/88.abstract N2 - Background: Multiple studies on recovery of hemianopsia after cerebrovascular accident report visual-field enlargements after stimulation of the visual-field border area. These enlargements are made evident by the difference between pre- and post-training measurements of the visual field. Until now, it was not known how the visual-field enlargement develops.Aim: To study how the enlargement develops as a function of time.Methods: 11 subjects were trained by stimulating the border area of their visual-field defect using a Goldmann perimeter. The visual-field border location was assessed using dynamic Goldmann perimetry before, after and during training (after each 10th training session). To monitor eye fixation, a video-based eye-tracker was used during each complete perimetry session.Results: It was found that visual-field enlargement during training is actually a gradual shift of the visual-field border, which was independent of the type of stimulus-set used during training. The shift could be observed while eye fixation was accurate.Conclusion: Visual-detection training leads to a decrease in detection thresholds in the affected visual-field areas and to visual-field enlargement. Training effects can be generalised to important daily-life activities like reading. ER -