Visual Rehabilitation for People with Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI)

Visual Rehabilitation for People with Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI)

WILSON TANG, yu-fung, 

ABSTRACT. Visual rehabilitation, consisting of visual stimulation and visual training, is a common practice in education of people with cortical visual impairments. Rehabilitation of this aspect is still in the stage of development. Good, et al stated that “there is no precise treatment for CVI and many rehabilitative measures are unproven.” The support for this statement is reviewed by describing the scientific relevance and plausibility of the aims and presuppositions of visual stimulation and training programs as well as the results of 5 empirical studies. There are empirical evidences to support the effect of visual stimulation and the effect on visual neurological pathway alternation for people with Cortical Visual Impairment. However, because of the small sample sizes in these researches, lack of randomized control trials and lack of control groups, the empirical evidence is still to sparse to draw convincing conclusions. The effects of visual stimulation and training are ambiguous. There is an urgent need for randomized controlled trials with dependent variables that are relevant to everyday life. Index terms: visual stimulation, visual training, cortical blindness, cerebral visual impairment, visual rehabilitation.