Summary
Mild traumatic brain injury causes a wide range of visual impairments including defects in visual acuity, visual fields, eye movements, and pupillary light responses, which may serve as early diagnostic indicators. Lighting designers and healthcare providers working with TBI patients should consider visual rehabilitation strategies and potentially tinted or prismatic lenses to accommodate photosensitivity and visual processing deficits.
Key Findings
- TBI can result in multiple concurrent visual deficits including impaired visual acuity, visual field loss, vergence dysfunction, saccadic and smooth pursuit movement abnormalities, and disrupted pupillary light responses.
- Eye movement dysfunction may serve as an early clinical sign of TBI, suggesting oculomotor assessment as a useful screening tool.
- Visual rehabilitation including oculomotor training and specialty spectacles (tints and prisms) is identified as a beneficial intervention for chronic TBI visual dysfunction.
- All age groups are susceptible to TBI-related visual impairment, with children, young adults, and the elderly at particular risk.
Categories
Eye Health & Vision: Reviews visual deficits following mTBI including retinal structure changes, visual acuity loss, visual field defects, and eye movement dysfunction.
The Science of Light: Discusses pupillary light responses as a measurable biomarker of TBI-related neurological damage affecting photoreceptor and neural pathways.
Author(s)
T Toan
Related Publications
Eye Health & Vision
- Diminished pupillary light reflex at high irradiances in melanopsin-knockout mice
- Genetic reactivation of cone photoreceptors restores visual responses in retinitis pigmentosa
- Melanopsin and rod–cone photoreceptors play different roles in mediating pupillary light responses during exposure to continuous light in humans
- Characteristic patterns of dendritic remodeling in early-stage glaucoma: evidence from genetically identified retinal ganglion cell types
- Intrinsically photosensitive melanopsin retinal ganglion cell contributions to the pupillary light reflex and circadian rhythm
The Science of Light
- Phototransduction by retinal ganglion cells that set the circadian clock
- Color appearance models
- The mammalian circadian timing system: organization and coordination of central and peripheral clocks
- Diminished pupillary light reflex at high irradiances in melanopsin-knockout mice
- Melanopsin is required for non-image-forming photic responses in blind mice