At the risk of this blog post delving too deeply into my personal life, I felt compelled to choose a topic which really connected with me so far during this course. While discussing localization of function pertaining to the anatomy of the brain and how the different lobes control different aspects of brain function, I became extremely interested in the occipital lobe which is located at the back of the brain. (Penn State World Campus) I had previously learned about the brain in anatomy courses but had never really considered my own personal experiences with processes that are located within the occipital lobe of the brain until we discussed that information more in detail during this course.

While the basic information was known to me that the occipital lobe was related to our vision, I had never heard the more detailed description of how it receives and processes visual information. There was a specific example that was used during our Lesson 2 Module notes which expressed that this lobe’s only known function is to receive and process visual data, receives our view of the environment much like a map and therefore we perceive objects that are close to each other within that environment as being processed as being close to each other within our brain. (Penn State World Campus)

For some, this idea might sound rather simple to comprehend but it was during this course that I came to an important realization about my own perception and how my brain processes visual information. When I was a toddler, I sustained an accidental head injury which required trauma care in the hospital after I fell and hit my head on the metal frame of a very outdated and poorly-constructed couch. The exact area of contact falls within the area where the occipital lobe is located. I have always been told that I had “perfect” vision when visiting the optician’s office but for much of my life, struggled with depth perception. This struggle went undetected until I started to experience seizure activity during early adulthood. Epilepsy was ruled out and multiple imaging tests were conducted but failed to find any concrete explanation for my seizures, which thankfully have been since resolved. The only information we were able to obtain for certain was that in at least one instance of seizure activity that was measured via EEG (electroencephalogram), the seizures were affecting my occipital lobe. (Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2018)

Somehow, I never made the connection between these different issues regarding my health and well-being. During the same three-year period where my seizures were at an all-time high, I was also prescribed eyeglasses for the first time in my life and was diagnosed with a “drooping” eyelid on my right eye. After long periods of using my eyes to view a screen or device, or reading for too long without adequate lighting, I will often develop a headache in the back of my head, close to the area which connects with the nape of my neck. I currently wear contact lenses and use lubricating eye drops to help with my lid and have not really had many issues at all since my early 20’s, which was when my brain had seizure issues most frequently. I still have issues with depth perception and have also developed an inability to see at night, commonly called night blindness, despite my many efforts to reclaim my once perfect vision.

I’m not entirely sure that any of these issues are connected, since I am not in the professional positions to diagnose such things, but it certainly makes me wonder since there is clearly a connection between the location and corresponding functions of the brain. I have spent a small amount of time researching the brain on my own between completing my required assignments and coursework and plan to learn more about how these things might be interrelated. I felt that this information was extremely helpful in discovering new ideas and areas to research about my own brain and experiences with visual processing and reception, but it also is very intriguing to me that localization of function is still an area of science that has so many unanswered questions. (Franz & Gillett, 2011)

 

 

 

Works Cited

Franz, E. A., & Gillett, G. (2011, October 1). John Hughlings Jackson’s evolutionary neurology: a unifying framework for cognitive neuroscience. Brain, 134(10), 3114–3120. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awr218

Johns Hopkins Medicine. (2018). Electroencephalogram (EEG). Retrieved from Johns Hopkins Medicine: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/test_procedures/neurological/electroencephalogram_eeg_92,P07655

Penn State World Campus. (n.d.). PSYCH 256, 003, SP18. Retrieved from Lesson 2 : Cognitive Neuroscience: https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1923779/modules/items/23782693