Of all the senses oriented towards the perception of the outside world, vision is the one that is most developed in human beings.
Our visual capacity allows us to detect and process very detailed information about the world around us, giving us the ability to perceive a large amount of information regarding the stimuli that surround us. However, sight is a sense that can be lost or not possessed: there are a large number of alterations that can cause a person to be born without the ability to see or lose visual ability to a large extent or even completely.
In those people who were born with the ability to see but who lose it abruptly after a brain injury, sometimes a strange condition arises in which, despite not being able to perceive the environment visually, they are convinced that they do. This is Anton syndrome which we are going to talk about throughout this article.
Anton syndrome is a medical condition characterized by the presence of anosognosia or lack of awareness of the presence of alterations that occurs in people who, on an objective level, have completely lost their vision after having suffered a brain injury that destroys the cortical areas responsible for processing this type of information.
This is a type of visual agnosia, that is, a lack of recognition of the visual information that the subject receives, although in this case it is due to the non-recognition of non-vision.
Symptoms
The person who suffers from this condition is not disguising or pretending, but really is unable to detect that it cannot see and acts as if he possesses the ability to perceive the environment through his eyes. In this situation, the subject conspires visually, that is, he or she mentally and unconsciously generates the content that he or she would see, sometimes using information from his or her other senses that may sometimes appear to have a certain precision. Even if they generally stumble often due to their lack of vision, the denial of blindness is usually continuous and persistent, although when confronted with visual stimuli they often give imprecise responses.
Although their visual organs are functional, the visual cortex, which allows the processing and perception of visual information, is destroyed or disconnected, making vision not possible (a condition known as cortical blindness). Anton syndrome usually It is usually accompanied by a certain compromise of cognitive functions which occur comorbidly but are not part of the syndrome itself, such as memory problems.
Since they are not able to perceive that they cannot see and because they move normally as a result, they frequently have stumbles and sometimes even accidents that can endanger their physical integrity.
In addition to that The mixture of blindness and denial of this implies that dysfunctions arise in spheres such as social, academic (it is not unusual for them to claim to be able to read and write despite not actually being able to do so) or work (in which generally their performance will be obviously reduced and in which depending on the type of employment they may even to commit negligence due to their problems).
Causes
As a general rule, the causes of the appearance of Anton syndrome are found in the presence of a brain injury This lesion must cause destruction or disconnection of the visual areas of the occipital lobe bilaterally, that is, affecting the occipital region of both cerebral hemispheres. This lesion is the origin of cortical blindness that prevents them from seeing.
The reason why anosognosia appears is not so clear, although it is common to find that the injury suffered has also generated damage or alterations in the occipitotemporal regions that would serve as an association area.
The causes of the lesion appearing can be multiple, the most common being the presence of cerebrovascular accidents (either due to ischemia or hemorrhage).
In addition to this, other possible causes of its appearance are craniocerebral trauma, the presence of infections or compression caused by brain tumors. High blood pressure, smoking or diabetes are risk factors for vascular problems that may affect this.
Treatment
Anton syndrome is an alteration whose treatment is complex, and generally requires the joint work of a multidisciplinary team that takes into account the different needs and particularities of the case in question.
To begin, it is necessary to understand that cortical blindness It is generally chronic, although in some cases there may be some improvement if abilities such as light capture are preserved and/or if the cause of blindness is partially reversible (it is very rare but sometimes the resorption of a hemorrhage or the treatment of some infections that cause blindness could imply some improvement) .
At a medical level, efforts will be made to treat the cause and the brain injury in the best possible way, something that may or may not include surgery. However, this would be to treat the cause itself and not so much Anton syndrome, which can be understood as a complication of it.
Regardless of this, the treatment will require an intervention at the level of the subject’s awareness of their current situation and the existence of visual problems. In this sense it may be necessary restructure your beliefs by proposing behavioral experiments This is a first step that can be essential for the patient to adhere to rehabilitation and neurological or functional stimulation programs, so that the patient can learn mechanisms to reduce the difficulties that their condition generates.
Psychoeducation is essential especially for the affected person but also for their immediate environment, which is also usually the reason why the patient comes to the consultation and is usually more worried than the subject himself (who, after all, believes he sees perfectly).
