Wounds of the Visual Pathway: Part I: The Visual Radiation

The representation of the visual field in the visual radiation has received comparatively little attention. In reporting cases of head injury in the first world war, Holmes (1918) stressed the frequency of precise quadrantanopia in wounds of the visual radiation and suggested, though tentatively, that there might be an anatomical interval between the lower half of the radiation subserving the upper quadrant of the visual field and the upper half subserving the lower quadrant. Anatomical studies in monkeys-and man have shown, however, that this apparent interval is occupied by fibres subserving central vision which, as elsewhere in the visual pathways, are extremely numerous compared with the area of the visual field they subserve (Polyak, 1934, 1942). Polyak