To see or not to see? Neurocognitive assessment of medically unexplained visual loss.

Details

Supervisors

Collignon, Olivier

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences psychologiques

Abstract

Neurologists are often called to examine patients with vision loss complaints. In some rare cases, after numerous clinical tests, all medical causes have been ruled out and a diagnosis of "medically unexplained visual loss" (MUVL) is made. Among some hypotheses that have been suggested to explain the cause of this disorder (e.g. psychogenic), one is particularly intriguing: a loss of visual consciousness. This unique and poorly understood condition constitutes the project of this thesis, which is driven by two main objectives: one has clinical implications and aims to provide new knowledge about this disorder and its origins, the other is more fundamental and, based on the above-mentioned assumption, intends to consider this condition as a model to study consciousness. The thesis has been developed as follow: the theoretical part first presents an overview of the study of visual consciousness, including the conceptualization and the main theories. Then, a second chapter focuses on the MUVL condition and refers to some cases reported in the literature. The empirical part consists in a single case study on VG, a patient diagnosed with a medically unexplained visual loss in his right eye. The methods and the results are presented, and a general discussion is provided in the last part of the thesis.