How many occipital lobes are there

The occipital lobe is heavily dependent on:. The most obvious effect of damage to the occipital lobe is blindness, but occipital lobe damage can have other surprising effects:.

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Author: Spinalcord. Where is the Occipital Lobe Located? What Does the Occipital Lobe Do? Those include: Mapping the visual world, which helps with both spatial reasoning and visual memory. Most vision involves some type of memory, since scanning the visual field requires you to recall that which you saw just a second ago.

Determining color properties of the items in the visual field. Assessing distance, size, and depth. Identifying visual stimuli, particularly familiar faces and objects. Transmitting visual information to other brain regions so that those brain lobes can encode memories, assign meaning, craft appropriate motor and linguistic responses, and continually respond to information from the surrounding world.

Receiving raw visual data from perceptual sensors in the eyes' retina. Those include: Brodmann area 17 : Known as V1, this region is located in the occipital lobe's calcarine sulcus, and serves as the brain's primary visual cortex. It aids the brain to determine location, spatial information, and color data. The ventral stream : Known sometimes as V2, this is a secondary visual cortex that helps the brain assign meaning to what it is seeing.

Without V2, you would still be able to see, but would have no conscious awareness of or understanding of the sights your eyes took in. The dorsomedial stream : Neuroscientists don't yet have a strong understanding of this brain region, which connects to both V1 and V2, as well as other brain regions.

The lateral geniculate bodies : These structures take in optic information from retinal sensors in each eye, sending raw information to each visual cortex.

Lingula : this area receives information from the contralateral inferior retina to gather information about the field of vision. The occipital lobe is heavily dependent on: The eyes, particularly the retinas, which take in and process visual information to then be further processed by the occipital lobe.

The frontal lobe , which contains the brain's motor cortex. Without motor skills, the eyes cannot move or take in information from surrounding regions. The temporal lobe, which helps assign meaning to visual information, in addition to encoding it into memories. What Happens if the Occipital Lobe is Damaged?

The most obvious effect of damage to the occipital lobe is blindness, but occipital lobe damage can have other surprising effects: Epilepsy: Some seizures occur in the occipital lobe, and occipital lobe damage increases vulnerability to seizures.

Difficulties with movement: Even if you are still able to move, changes in depth perception and vision can lead to inappropriate movements and difficulty navigating the visual field. Medially, it is confined by the medial longitudinal fissure which divides both cerebral hemispheres. The tentorium cerebelli forms its inferior border and the occipital bone its posterior margin.

The occipital lobe is concerned with visual processing and is composed of three Brodmann areas :. The lateral surface of the occipital lobe is highly variable, reflected by the literature which is either vague or contradictory.

As such, care must be taken in using specific anatomical terms as readers may have a different interpretation of the same anatomy. The simplest description, which conforms to the sulcal pattern found in the frontal and temporal lobes, unfortunately, is only present in approximately two-thirds of cases 1.

When present the lateral surface is divided into three roughly parallel gyri superior, middle and inferior occipital gyri by two transverse occipital sulci referred to as superior and inferior when both are present 1.

The following neurological deficits occur with unilateral or bilateral lesions of the occipital lobes 11 :. Please Note: You can also scroll through stacks with your mouse wheel or the keyboard arrow keys. Updating… Please wait. Unable to process the form. Check for errors and try again. Thank you for updating your details. Log In. Sign Up. Become a Gold Supporter and see no ads.

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