• Question: Why do people go blind?

    Asked by to Kevin, Fiona, Elaine, Darren, Anna on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Fiona McLean

      Fiona McLean answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      There are a few reasons why people go blind. It’s mainly due to illness or damage to the eye. The main reasons people go blind are if the eye shape changes, if certain parts of the eye stop working such as the lens and retina and if the optic nerve gets damaged. The optic nerve is important because it takes information that your eyes see and takes it to the brain so it can work it out. The part of the brain that works out all the visual information is called the visual cortex. Sometimes if this gets damaged then even though your eyes work you still can’t see!

    • Photo: Kevin O'Dell

      Kevin O'Dell answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Fiona’s quite right, as there are lots of illness and accident-related as to why you might go blind.

      I addition there are quite a lot of genetic conditions, all very rare, that affect vision. One of these is Retinitis pigmentosa (RP). People with this condition have normal vision at birth but because one gene is mutant they progressively lose their sight. This happens very slowly over many years. So for many years people affected with RP have a kind of tunnel vision. Not all RP suffers go completely blind.

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