Our labour of love is finally out, Matt Cavanaugh and I wrote a policy review detailing our recommendations for changes in the standard of care for individuals with visual loss post-stroke. Read the full paper here:

A really lovely article by my colleagues discussing the portrayal of visual impairment in kids films

RT @NCAresearchNHS: Stroke specialist orthoptist @chowardclaire has been awarded a prestigious 5-year Advanced Clinical and Practitioner Ac….

I am so grateful to everyone who helped make this paper happen - from everyone who worked on the paper, our wonderful participants, the reviewing team at JNeuro and all our funding 🧠.

This research shows the importance of hMT+ and the pathway connecting to it for residual vision. This suggests that these areas might be important when considering the optimal rehabilitation for individuals.

We found: 1) residual vision is variable across patients, 2) lesion size relates to residual vision, 3) lesion location relates to residual vision (especially if there is damage to the visual motion sensitive area of the brain - hMT+, or the pathway connecting to it).

Four researchers then delineated the lesions in each individual persons brain. We then worked out which areas of the brain each lesion affected, and the size of the lesion.

We asked them to complete three tasks in their blind field looking at their ability to detect contrast, motion and faces/places.

We collaborated across three research studies and included 37 participants with damage to the primary visual cortex who had homonymous visual field deficits.

In this study, we wanted to look at how the location of damage and amount of damage to the brain affects whether an individual can show residual vision within their blind field.

New paper 👀 - We looked at how #lesion location and size in a large number of #stroke survivors with #visual #field deficits affects ability to #see within the blind field. This paper was a huge collaborative and such a joy to work on. Summary below.

RT @braincomms: Willis et al. report that 6 months of visual training enhances white matter integrity in geniculo-extrastriate pathways, su….

Such a privilege to speak at UKstrokeforum yesterday about our research looking at changes in the brain after visual rehabilitation post-stroke. This session, chaired by @lauren_hepworth, showcased the impact of stroke on vision, and what we need to do to improve treatment 🧠.

RT @OxfordStrokeRRH: Stroke recovery hub members at #UKSF24 🧠

RT @OxfordStrokeRRH: @hannaxwillis gave a brilliant talk at #UKSF24 in the Post stroke visual impairments session this afternoon! . Well do….

RT @OxfordStrokeRRH: Our very own Dr Melanie Fleming (@Mels_Science) giving a talk on Improving Sleep after Stroke during the Sleep and fat….

RT @__MorganM: It was truly a pleasure and a privilege to get the opportunity to have @toyinyacncay share her journey with me for @royalsoc….

Final thank you to everyone else who made it possible: my incredible PhD supervisors @HollyBridge8 @kateewatkins, my collaborators @HuxlinLab @furranko @BrainLifeio, all my coauthors, and finally the amazing participants who made this work a joy to carry out.

The stage 1 registered report was originally accepted in 2020, and this paper reflects 4-years of work through a pandemic. Thank you to @braincomms for supporting us through this process.

These results add to a body of literature showing the importance of the dLGN-hMT+ pathway in residual vision, and suggests that this pathway can be recruited by training to restore conscious vision post-stroke.

We did not find changes in the untrained (undamaged) hemisphere, or in a group that did not complete training. This suggests that the changes found reflect improvements due to training.