Talk:Visual field

Bitemporal and Binasal hemianopia are labeled incorrectly in their respective pictures. They are actually reversed. Thanks  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:544:4201:91FA:E9F2:AC3E:C96D:10A3 (talk) 14:10, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Is there a way to get a description or diagram the different parts of the visual field and what they are called? And also to get more images of what the field deficiencies would look like? And also what part of the brain controls each field? Thanks. ChildofMidnight (talk) 05:57, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

This article needs a _lot_ of work, and is very confused and liable to mis-inform. To most vision scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists, "visual field" just means "the x degrees by x degrees span of stuff that a viewer can see", hence, "a light source in the right half of a dark visual field would lead to predictable activity in the left half of striate cortex." 132.239.215.69 (talk) 23:34, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

A variety of disciplines needs this concept to be better understood, not only in Medicine but also in Astronomy and so on. It is standardly identified by degree X degree, for example, 60 degree X 20 degree, How to understand this identification method? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abonic (talk • contribs) 03:29, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah... how is a field of view 'inward toward the nose'? StarChaser Tyger (talk) 12:20, 24 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I have published quite a bit on the visual field, including an article in the Encyclopedia of Neuroscience; 3rd edition. It answers the main questions. It's on my homepage, but since it is not open access, I cannot just link to that paper. I will try and ask the editors whether it could be made available. Strasburger (talk) 15:07, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Dear Authors of the article

 * Before publication in the article, I would like to obtain your consent. My usual language is not English. I would appreciate that before the publication would help me in their adaptation to English language.

The good vision island


 * The visual field is uneven. Our visual field is not uniform and has its maximum definition in its central part.


 * H.M. Traquair describes in 1927 our visual field as an island of vision or hill of vision surrounded by a sea of blindness (Traquair, Harry Moss. An Introduction to clinical perimetry’’. London, Henry Kimpton,1927,pp.264.) The island of vision'' corresponds to a sudden change of definition we have. Its empirical elliptical limits in the longest axis, the horizontal, are our Blind Spots.


 * La Lumière à Sénanque  (The Light in Sénanque” ) it’s a chapter of " Cîteaux : commentarii cistercienses " publication of the Cistercian Order 1992. Its author, Kim Lloveras i Montserrat argues that in the Romanesque age were aware of the particularities of ours Blind Spot as horizontal limits of the central good vision. Further, they know that more than a change in definition there is a strong change of perception of space. The Person, the Observer, feels inside the central area and understands their external as their enveloping. With this assumption, we can predict in what specific point the Observer comes into or out to a concrete space (for example, into the apse). It is to say that it becomes a very helpful instrument of architectural design. They used a good vision cone with the apex is in the eyes of the observer, with a circular cross-section, whose diameter, like H.M. Traquair, is defined by the outer limits of blinds spots. They used a circular cross-section because they think that the good central vision has a circular form, probably by the belief that the circle is more perfect than a ellipse.


 * In 2008, proposed by Kim Lloveras i Montserrat, takes place the experience of the cone of good vision at the School of Architecture of Barcelona http://www.arquiteturarevista.unisinos.br/pdf/49.pdf. It is done with a large ellipse TK (theoretical ellipse very similar that proposed by H.M. Traquair for limits of his vision island). Its height is 3.10 m (twice of the high of the vision person) and its major axis has 3.94 m. It is from a point on the ground, previously stated (located at 6.38 m), that the Observer of experience (with a normal vision) has the feeling of entering into the ellipse.


 * Our good vision cone is really the area of our vision with little deformation and also the limit in which we feel inside.
 * Alatac2012 (talk) 15:33, 30 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Dear Alatac2012, the section is interesting but to me appears to be out of place. It is not in agreement with current knowledge and thinking about the visual field. The concept of a "good visual island", limited by the blind spot, is not agreed upon. For example, sensitivity to light is highest just outside of the blind spot and continues to be good further out. The concept of "maximum definition" is unclear. If it refers to spatial resolution or cone density, the limit is somewhere else, not at the blind spot.
 * I would propose to delete the section or move it somewhere else (but I wouldn't know where). At least it should be marked as of historical or artistic interest only. Strasburger (talk) 20:06, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * On another reading I assume the appropriate place would be a section "The visual field in the arts". I do not think we should have such a section, though. The rationales given by the artist were appropriate when Traquair wrote his classical text but are obsolete today. I have taken the liberty of deleting the section. The references are preserved in the above text. Strasburger (talk) 16:55, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Field of view
There was a sentence in the introduction reading:
 * "Visual field is sometimes confused with a field of view. The field of view is everything that at a given time causes light to fall onto the retina. This input is processed by the visual system, which computes the visual field as the output."

I have taken the liberty to delete that sentence: It was unsourced and, I believe, misleading. I replaced it by
 * "The equivalent concept for optical instruments and sensors is the Field of View (FOV)" Strasburger (talk) 21:30, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi, could you please find some time to make the distinction between the two more clear? Perhaps provide more complementary definitions, pointing out the similarities and differences between the two terms? At present, (Field of view): "the extent of the observable world that is seen at any given moment" adresses the topic from a POV quaite incomaptible with (Visual field): "spatial array of visual sensations available to observation in introspectionist psychological experiments". Also the section "Humans and animals" in FOW seem to speak about Visual field but that is not totally clear from the article. And when you look at the corresponding articles in other languages, only Català, Deutsch, Español, Français, and Hrvatski have articles on both. In the other 25 languages only one term is used. So, in these 25 languages, can the same term be used (in scientific use) to cover both English/German/French terms, making the distinction stem rather from the methodology/discourse used, or do these articles confuse two distinct physical-physiological phenomena? I have no background in these matters just wondered how the two "terms" differ. Thanks, --WikiHannibal (talk) 16:51, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I see your point. The quick answer is, the concepts are different – not just methodologically – and should have separate entries in all languages. In a nutshell, the visual field is a concept applicable to humans and animals, and the FOV is a concept from optics. The differences should indeed be pointed out more clearly, and it should be made clearer that most of the section "Humans and animals" in FOV speaks about the visual field (and is thus somewhat off topic). I’ll try to come back to that when I have time. Strasburger (talk) 19:41, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I have inserted a few changes on the FOV page now to make the distinction more explicit. Have a look whether you find it clearer. Ultimately the section “Humans and Animals” in FOV might be moved to the end of that article because it is off topic (but that would be a major change). Strasburger (talk) 09:40, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Visual pathway lesions
This file is simple representation of visual field defect due to visual pathway lesions. It is in another language. It will be better if someone convert this to English and upload to this page. Ajeeshkumar4u (talk) 07:35, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The graph is indeed better suited than the present one because it is clearer. There is no need, though, to convert it to English -- similar illustrations are available in English. I will have a look. Strasburger (talk) 15:07, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you Strasburger. Searched in commons, but failed to find the English version, so I translated the original file and updated the page. Ajeeshkumar4u (talk) 06:04, 10 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Good work. Did a few language corrections and changed the classification of visual field defects. Strasburger (talk) 15:48, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Definition of the visual field
The introductory paragraph used two incompatible definitions as synonymous, a perceptual definition by Smythies (1996), and a stimulus-oriented definition from ophthalmology that is more standardly used. I rephrased that paragraph to start out with the latter, putting Smythies’ definition second, with some explanations for better understanding. Strasburger (talk) 16:01, 18 April 2023 (UTC)