Development of Visual Function

视觉功能的发展

• 批准号: 8685694
• 负责人: Lynne Kiorpes
• 金额: $ 13.57万
• 依托单位: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-12-01 至 2014-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8685694
• 关键词: Accounting; Address; Adult; Affect; Afferent Neurons; Age; Age Factors; Amblyopia; Animal Model; Animals; Anisometropia; Area; Behavioral; Biological Assay; Birth; Cells; Child; Child Development; Crowding; Development; Developmental Process; Discrimination; Disease; Evaluation; Eye; Family; Future; Goals; Human; Intervention; Investigation; Learning; Measurement; Measures; Methods; Modeling; Monkeys; Motion; Nature; Neurons; Outcome; Perception; Perceptual learning; Performance; Physiological; Physiology; Prevention strategy; Process; Property; Psychological Transfer; Psychophysics; Relative (related person); Risk; Sensory; Signal Transduction; Social Welfare; Source; Staging; Stimulus; Strabismus; Structure; Testing; Training; Vision; Visual; Visual system structure; Work; awake; clinical practice; developmental disease; disability; experience; improved; insight; neuromechanism; neurophysiology; nonhuman primate; prevent; relating to nervous system; response; tool; treatment strategy; visual information; visual performance

The goals of this work are to establish the value of perceptual learning as a treatment strategy for amblyopia, and to evaluate a new hypothesis for the neural mechanism underlying amblyopia. We study a nonhuman primate model for the human visual system so that we can study developmental processes and treatment strategies without compromising the visual welfare of any child, and so that we can directly assess the underlying neural correlates of developmental visual disability. The proposed work addresses two general areas of investigation: the value of perceptual learning as a treatment option for amblyopia, and the idea that amblyopia is a deficit in decoding at a high level in the perceptual processing hierarchy. This work builds on our prior behavioral and neurophysiological studies showing that the encoding of visual information by the amblyopic visual system is relatively normal and cannot account for the high-order perceptual losses evident in amblyopes. Perceptual learning has recently been demonstrated to be beneficial for improving visual performance in adult amblyopes. We will establish whether or not perceptual learning is a viable, effective, long-lasting treatment option for amblyopia by providing extensive visual experience at different ages with challenging, integrative perceptual tasks, and assessing the degree of transfer of the training effects to other perceptual abilities and the relative permanence of the effects. We will also study the development of crowding and assess the effects of visual experience on the degree or "critical span" of crowding. Our working hypothesis is that the fundamental disorder in amblyopia is one of decoding of the encoded sensory information. We further hypothesize that the decoding deficit occurs at a high level in the visual system, probably beyond MT and V4, and similarly affects many perceptual processes. We propose to evaluate the nature of the decoding abnormality in amblyopes by measuring the perceptual template, evaluating the effects of perceptual learning on the template, and recording the effect of perceptual learning on the neurons that contribute to the perceptual decision. The proposed work employs a combination of psychophysical and physiological methods to evaluate the neural correlates of amblyopia and associated perceptual abnormalities. We study normal development as well as amblyopia to learn about the important constraints on adult perception. Our work will inform efforts to prevent amblyopia development in children and, through the development of child-friendly training tools, more effectively treat the disorder.

这项工作的目标是确立知觉学习作为弱视治疗策略的价值，并评估弱视神经机制的新假设。我们研究人类视觉系统的非人类灵长类动物模型，以便我们可以在不损害任何儿童的视觉福利的情况下研究发育过程和治疗策略，以便我们可以直接评估发育性视觉障碍的潜在神经相关性。拟议的工作涉及两个一般性的研究领域：感知学习作为弱视治疗选择的价值，以及弱视是感知处理层次结构中高级别解码的缺陷的想法。这项工作建立在我们之前的行为和神经生理学研究的基础上，研究表明弱视视觉系统对视觉信息的编码相对正常，并且不能解释弱视患者明显的高阶知觉损失。最近被证明感知学习有利于改善成人弱视患者的视觉表现。我们将通过在不同年龄段提供具有挑战性的综合知觉任务的丰富视觉经验，并评估训练效果向其他知觉能力的转移程度，来确定知觉学习是否是一种可行、有效、持久的弱视治疗选择以及影响的相对持久性。我们还将研究拥挤的发展，并评估视觉体验对拥挤程度或“临界跨度”的影响。我们的工作假设是，弱视的根本障碍是编码的感觉信息的解码。我们进一步假设解码缺陷发生在视觉系统的高水平，可能超出 MT 和 V4，并且类似地影响许多感知过程。我们建议通过测量感知模板、评估感知学习对模板的影响以及记录感知学习对有助于感知决策的神经元的影响来评估弱视解码异常的性质。拟议的工作采用心理物理学和生理学方法相结合来评估弱视和相关知觉异常的神经相关性。我们研究正常发育和弱视，以了解成人感知的重要限制。我们的工作将为预防儿童弱视的发展提供信息，并通过开发儿童友好的培训工具，更有效地治疗这种疾病。