Kathleen Vancleef
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Kathleen Vancleef
@kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
600 followers 790 following 56 posts
Associate Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience. Improving diagnosis and rehabilitation of visual perception problems after brain injury. Stroke. CVI. She/her
Kathleenvancleef.org
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kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
🧠 Big welcome to Jackie Ferraro, who’s joining our team as a doctoral researcher! Jackie explores how kids with Cerebral Visual Impairment experience cluttered spaces like classrooms and shops. She’s got a cool mix of neuroscience, psychology, and creative arts in her background.🎉 #CVI #AcademicLife
Professional headshot of a white young female looking person with long blond hair. They are wearing a black stripy top.
October 1, 2025 at 9:37 AM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Still buzzing 🐝 after a fantastic day at #OTAUS2025 My #PosterSkirt was a great conversation starter 👗 Such a warm welcome from OT Australia. Sharing behind-the-scenes with you here.

Massive thanks to astroradioleah.bsky.social‬ as sewing teacher and to Imy (10) for making video “less cringe”
June 25, 2025 at 11:13 AM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Looking forward to learn about OT stroke services. We were off to a great start with Ellen Druce on supporting patients with their independent practice, Tayla Grant on activity based rehab in in-patient settings, and Natasha Lannin and Sally Day on falls prevention #OTA2025
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June 25, 2025 at 5:28 AM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Getting ready for conferences and lab visits in Brisbane. If you're attending
🧠 #OHBM2025
👀 #IOC2025
🤯 #PacificRim2025
or you're just in Brisbane between 28th June and 5th July, get in touch! I would love to talk all things brains, eyes, and neuropsychology.
Brisbane skyline by night
June 19, 2025 at 4:08 PM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Started a slightly different project recently with Leah Morabito! It has everything I love: learning something new, creative problem solving, and a high nerdiness level 🤓 Result will be revealed in a few weeks.
May 29, 2025 at 8:13 PM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
👩‍⚕️ OTs and Orthoptists 👨‍⚕️ New survey about current practice of visual perception difficulties after a brain injury: tinyurl.com/mpbebbmt.
Results will inform new training and clinical tools. ⏳ 5-10 min 🏆 15 free posters about visual perception difficulties + rehab advice, see 🔽. Thank you!!
Achromatopsia poster. It shows a drawing of glasses. In one lens you can see letters in all colours. In the other lens, the same letters are in black and white. At the bottom there are come colouring pencils. A cartoon character is pointing to the yellow pencil and says 'what colour is this?' another character is saying 'yellow'. At the top is a post-it note that says '22% of stroke survivors will have some form of achromatopsia'. The main text reads: "This refers to a difficulty recognising or perceiving colour. The world can appear in shades of grey, or just look more dull. This can make it hard to tell the difference between similar shades of colours such as yellow and green. Difficulties can be restricted to either the left or right side of vision, or can cover both sides. There is no cure for achromatopsia, but managing its symptoms can look like: asking others to point out the colours of things, wearing tinted lenses to help with light sensitivity, using technology like apps to identify colour"
January 7, 2025 at 12:51 PM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Reading difficulties after a stroke are common. One type is neglect dyslexia. People misread words because they are not aware of the first or last letters of the word. Read more: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20714712/ Infographic by Bella Belbali
Infographic on neglect dyslexia. The text say: This can involve consistent letter omission, additions, and substitution errors on either the left or right side of a word reading individual words. 61% of people who had a stroke have more difficulties with reading then people of a similar age who had not had a stroke. Treatment can include: sounding out letters phonetically, using technology, speech and language therapy. For example, a word-level reading error (if the left side of your vision was affected) could mean that you read the word "blend" as "lend". There is a picture of an older gentleman sitting in an armchair with a hot drink. It also shows a notebook with part of the text blurred.
December 10, 2024 at 1:39 PM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Excellent first day at #uksf24. Dr Kate Cowen did an excellent job presenting our poster. Lots of interest. Sessions on health inequality and co-production already gave me some ideas on how we can improve our research.
Dr Kate Cowen is standing in front of a scientific poster. She is explaining it to a crowd of about 15 people all gathered around her. One lady is carrying a large red balloon in the shape of the number 5. In the background are several other posters mounted on poster boards.
December 4, 2024 at 8:10 AM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Getting ready for #UKSF24 Dr Kate Cowen will be presenting her poster this afternoon in Tour 5.
Photo of the Liverpool docks with the wheel in the background and people walking towards a conference centre
December 3, 2024 at 10:13 AM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
After a stroke survivors can have difficulties with global attention. They can't see the wood for the trees. Infographic by Bella Belbali.
Infographic about global attention deficit. It shows a lady looking at a photo of a busy street. She looks puzzled. There is a magnifier zooming in on one man in the street. The text says: in the image above, finding a friend may be ok sine isolated features can be focused on. However, someone might struggle identifying the wider scene, eg the fact he's on a street. There is more text in the right corner saying What is it? Deficits in attention are one of the most commonly observed cognitive impairments after stroke. Global attention deficits refers to an inability to attend to the global shape of an image, instead focusing on smaller details. This can hinder someone's recognition.
December 2, 2024 at 4:48 PM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
When losing part of their visual field stroke patients can sometimes still have unconscious vision on that side: they say they can't see anything, but still react to things in their blind field. This is blindsight. Read more: tinyurl.com/3j7raksw
Infographic on blindsight , the text says people with blindsight can use their vision to pick up things or find their way but are unaware that he can see. After visual field loss patients have unconscious visual function in the hemianopic field. it has a picture of a blind And off an MRI scan of a brain.
November 29, 2024 at 4:25 PM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Getting ready for my first ever keynote at the #OTShow
Photo of a conference badge saying Kathleen Vancleef, Associate Professor, Durham University, Speaker, Occupational Therapy Show
November 27, 2024 at 3:23 PM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
In associative agnosia, people can see a picture clearly, describe it in detail and even make an accurate drawing of it, but they don't know what it is a picture of. Read more: tinyurl.com/4jk337jw
Infographic about associative agnosia: difficulties with accessing information about an object like name of function. Patients can clearly see things and describe an object in detail but cannot recognise it. Picture of a set of keys with the quote: "I don't konw what it is, perhaps a file or a tool of some sort"
November 26, 2024 at 4:46 PM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Newest and oldest addition to my library: a monograph from 1917. Gaps in treatment of visual perception issues are still here 100 years later. Should we look back more often to great ideas of pioneers in our field that did not have the evidence base at the time and have therefore been forgotten?
Book cover of disturbances of lower and higher visual capacities caused by occipital damage by Poppelreuter
November 21, 2024 at 2:02 PM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Just returned from an inspiring few days with other NIHR Academy members talking about how to maximise impact of our research. Thanks to #nihramc24 organisers for an excellent programme and delegates from all careers levels and professional backgrounds for the inspiring conversations
Photo of stage with four people sitting in chairs and engaging in a debate. The slide in the background says they are talking about what does impact mean for partners
November 21, 2024 at 1:53 PM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Apperceptive agnosia is a hard one to understand: difficulties with integrating features into a complex whole.
There are alternative definitions and closely related labels like visual form agnosia and integrative agnosia.
Infographic on apperceptive agnosia. It show a picture of jigsaw pieces and a drawing where the lines are disconnected which makes it hard to make out what it is. The text says: difficulties integrating simple features like colours, textures, and shapes into a coherent image. It it like a broken up jigsaw. Patients can see the colours, textures and edges but don't know what it is a picture of. There is also a quote saying "My vision seems piece meal. I cannot find my way around and get lost all the time"
November 21, 2024 at 1:45 PM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Difficulties with recognising objects is not unusual after a stroke. It can help to think of the visual system as an hierarchical process to understand what exactly is challenging for a patient, but the debate is ongoing.
Infographic. Diagram showing stages of visual perception and the conditions associated with failure at each stage: sensory vision and visual field --> basic coding of features like line orientation --> integration of features into basic 2D shapes (visual form agnosia) --> integration of complex features into objects (apperceptive agnosia) --> access to perceptual info and object invariance (integrative agnosia) --> access to conceptual info of objects, lexicon (associative agnosia). The pathway is illustrated with a picture of a clock starting from a few lines to the mental concept of a clock. The text says: Difficulties recognising objects. Object perception can break down at different stage of the hierarchical visual system, leading to different types of object agnosias.
November 20, 2024 at 8:34 AM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Today is about Alexia. There are many types. Pure alexia is a rare but devastating condition after stroke. People are unbale to read even though they can see the text clearly.
More details: tinyurl.com/46ktxrhu or tinyurl.com/yth7arv3
Infographic about Alexia. It shows a picture of a person reading a book. The text says: Difficulties with reading, <1% of stroke survivors have alexia, Stroke survivor can see text clearly but recognising and deciphering letters and words is harder.
November 19, 2024 at 10:56 AM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Motion blindness or akinetopsia is a rare condition after brain injury. People have difficulties seeing motion. You can imagine it as seeing the world as a series of static pictures. Infographic by Bella Belbali.
November 18, 2024 at 12:09 PM
kathleenvancleef.bsky.social
Did you know >20% of stroke survivors with a posterior stroke struggle with seeing colours? Their difficulties vary from just mixing up red and purple to full distortion of the colour space. More details in tinyurl.com/2dwwe2h5
November 17, 2024 at 4:21 PM