Disorders of visual perception

Visual perceptual disorders are often presented as a disparate group of neurological deficits with little consideration given to the wide range of visual symptoms found in psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disease. Here, the authors attempt a functional anatomical classification of all disorders linked to visual perception, whatever the clinical context in which they arise, including those disorders that bridge vision, emotion, memory, language and action. Guided by clinical and neuroimaging evidence, visual perceptual disorders are classified by the functional anatomical networks likely to be involved and the class of underlying dysfunction, whether topological (a localised deficit or region of hyperfunction) or hodological (a disconnection or hyperconnection). The wider perspective forces us to consider what visual functions underlie a range of symptoms sidelined by previous classificatory schemes and helps generate novel hypotheses for further research in the area.