Plank, Tina and Rosengarth, Katharina and Schmalhofer, Carolin and Goldhacker, Markus and Brandl-Ruehle, Sabine and Greenlee, Mark W. (2014) Perceptual learning in patients with macular degeneration. FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY, 5: 1189. ISSN 1664-1078,
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Patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) or hereditary macular dystrophies (JMD) rely on an efficient use of their peripheral visual field. We trained eight AMD and five JMD patients to perform a texture-discrimination task (TDT) at their preferred retinal locus (PRL) used for fixation. Six training sessions of approximately one hour duration were conducted over a period of approximately 3 weeks. Before, during and after training twelve patients and twelve age-matched controls (the data from two controls had to be discarded later) took part in three functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) sessions to assess training-related changes in the BOLD response in early visual cortex. Patients benefited from the training measurements as indexed by significant decrease (p = 0.001) in the stimulus onset asynchrony (SON between the presentation of the texture target on background and the visual mask, and in a significant location specific effect of the PRL with respect to hit rate (p = 0.014). The following trends were observed: (i) improvement in Vernier acuity for an eccentric line-bisection task; (ii) positive correlation between the development of BOLD signals in early visual cortex and initial fixation stability (r = 0.531); (iii) positive correlation between the increase in task performance and initial fixation stability (r = 0.730). The first two trends were non-significant, whereas the third trend was significant at p = 0.014, Bonferroni corrected. Consequently, our exploratory study suggests that training on the TDT can enhance eccentric vision in patients with central vision loss. This enhancement is accompanied by a modest alteration in the BOLD response in early visual cortex.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | CENTRAL SCOTOMA; VISUAL-ACUITY; TEXTURE-DISCRIMINATION; SPATIAL-FREQUENCY; BRAIN ACTIVATION; RETINAL LOCUS; READING SPEED; HUMAN ADULTS; VISION; FIXATION; perceptual learning; fMRI BOLD; cortical plasticity; visual cortex; macular degeneration |
| Subjects: | 100 Philosophy & psychology > 150 Psychology |
| Divisions: | Psychology and Pedagogy > Institut für Psychologie > Lehrstuhl für Psychologie I (Allgemeine Psychologie I und Methodenlehre) - Prof. Dr. Mark W. Greenlee |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Aug 2019 12:36 |
| Last Modified: | 08 Aug 2019 12:36 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/9345 |
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