Eyes for Brains
It wasn’t until I became an itinerant provider in 2019 that I had to heavily focus on CVIs. They were (and continue to be) the majority of my caseload and what I noticed over and over was the apparent lack of in-depth understanding. We had check-lists, we had outlines, we had goal banks and specially designed products. But an actual understanding of what was going on? Not so much. Most glaring is that the US is still using cortical while the rest of the world seems to be using cerebral — a focus on the entire brain instead of just the cortical region.
I could provide a long list of confidentiality-questionable case studies explaining why I pulled away from a lot of our tools related to CVIs. Short version: the brain is amazing and complex with a far more massive role in the use of vision than is commonly presented in training and conference sessions. This led to a stack of neuroscience textbooks on my dining table.
So we’re taking a little journey through the life of the brain, keeping two things in mind:
I’m trying to build greater context, not become an actual neuroscientist. I’ve got too much else buzzing around my brain to take in every term and component. The journey is really just trying to build some context that will make my work a tad more 3-dimensional.
Textbooks are expensive. The ones I have were cheap because they’re from the mid-2000s and that is a bit ancient when we’re talking about science. My hope though is that they can still give insight that I can put into practice.
Here we go.