Final answer:
The division of visual fields is imperative in diagnosing visual neglect, which can result from conditions like bilateral hemianopia due to a pituitary growth affecting the optic chiasm, and can cause loss of spatial awareness to one side of the visual field.
Step-by-step explanation:
The division of visual fields is critical in understanding how visual neglect occurs in patients. For instance, bilateral hemianopia is a condition that results in the loss of the outermost lateral peripheral vision, due to a growth pressing against the optic chiasm. This is different from "tunnel vision," where only the central visual fields are preserved. In the brain, visual information is processed along two streams, one into the temporal lobe and one into the parietal lobe, as indicated by Figure 14.26. Damage in certain parts of the brain can lead to neglect, where a patient's ability to recognize faces (prosopagnosia) or to perform certain motor or cognitive tasks, known as praxis and gnosis, may be impaired. Moreover, these deficits may be related to V-N dissociation, entailing difficulty in using verbs (V impairment) or nouns (N impairment) correctly. Figure 14.22 showcases the segregation of the visual field information at the optic chiasm, where contralateral visual field information crosses over to be processed by the opposite side of the brain, which can be related to visual field deficits and visual neglect.