S u m m a r y

Hyvärinen L (1998)

The ophthalmologist and vision research

Psykologia 33(4-5):256-261. Helsinki ISSN 0355-1067.

 

More than 30 years in vision research and more than 20 years in close co-operation with psychophysicists has been a rewarding experience resulting in more than 30 different tests for evaluation of visual acuity, grating acuity, contrast sensitivity, colour vision, cone adaptation and visual agnosias. Stimulation and training materials have been developed together with special educators. Present research together with Antti Raninen, Risto Näsänen and Jyrki Rovamo is in flicker sensitivity and motion perception. This area is clinically important because brain circulation failures may cause visual field defects that in usual clinical perimetric tests look like total hemifield defects but within which motion perception remains. This "hidden vision" explains why these persons do not bump onto objects in their "blind" half field and why they perform normally in traffic. Like contrast sensitivity measurements, motion perception adds a new dimension to visual impairment and disability.

 

Lea Hyvärinen, M.D., Department of Biomedicine, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland.