Effects of Biological Maturation and Visual Experience on Human Visual Developmen

生物成熟和视觉体验对人类视觉发育的影响

• 批准号: 7921985
• 负责人: RAIN G BOSWORTH
• 金额: $ 38.24万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-09-30 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7921985
• 关键词: Accounting; Address; Adult; Affect; Age; Animals; Anisometropia; Area; Biological; Birth; Brain; Cataract; Child; Conceptions; Contrast Sensitivity; Data; Development; Discrimination; Dizygotic Twins; Environment; Equilibrium; Eye; Eye Abnormalities; Genes; Genetic; Human; Infant; Influentials; Laboratories; Learning; Measures; Mediating; Metric; Modeling; Motion; Nature; Parents; Pathway interactions; Population; Premature Infant; Process; Psychophysiology; Refractive Errors; Relative (related person); Shapes; Stimulus; Strabismus; Techniques; Testing; Twin Multiple Birth; Ursidae Family; Vision Disorders; Vision research; Visual; Visual Cortex; Weight; congenital cataract; design; detector; developmental neurobiology; early experience; experience; factor A; koniocellular; luminance; magnocellular; neurophysiology; parvocellular; postnatal; programs; public health relevance; retinogeniculate; vision development; visual performance; visual process; visual processing

Description (provided by applicant): The degree to which visual development is governed by "nature" vs. "nurture" has been a long-standing topic in vision research. Although much has been learned from animal studies in the last 50 years, relatively little is known about the factors influencing visual development in humans. The current proposal investigates whether factors related to visual experience ("nurture") vs. preprogrammed biological maturation ("nature"), or both, are important in shaping visual development. To this end, we propose visual psychophysical studies with four different subject populations that tease apart these factors. (A) Fullterm Infants and (B) Healthy Preterm Infants. If early visual experience is the dominant force in visual development, preterm infants should show the same developmental trajectories as fullterm infants when plotted in terms of postnatal age (i.e. age since birth). By contrast, if biological maturation is more influential, preterm infants should match fullterm babies when plotted in postconceptional age (i.e., age since conception). (C) Monozygotic vs. Dizygotic Twins. While both twin types share the same environment and parents, they differ in the degree of shared genetic makeup. We apply a biometrical twin model that can identify the proportion of "phenotypic" variance in visual performance that can be accounted for by shared environment versus genes. (D) Infants and Children with Early Abnormal Visual Input. Comparisons made between this group (cataract, strabismus, and anisometropia) and healthy controls will address the vulnerability of various aspects of visual processing to abnormal visual experience early in development. Three aims address different levels of visual processing: 1) Subcortical Pathway Processing: We ask if the three main retinogeniculate pathways, Magnocellular (M), Parvocellular (P) and Koniocellular (K), are equally or differentially affected by visual experience, by obtaining contrast sensitivities for luminance, red/green and blue/yellow stimuli, thought to be mediated by these pathways, respectively. 2) Subcortical Input to Cortical Motion Processing: We will obtain an estimate of the extent of P vs. M subcortical pathway input to motion processing using a "Motion/Detection" threshold ratio paradigm that measures the relative effects of chromatic (P pathway) vs. luminance (M pathway) contrast on motion processing. Previous results from our laboratory suggest that the relative P vs. M input to motion decreases with age, and here we will ask whether this re-weighting process is influenced more by visual experience or biological maturation. 3) Cortical Motion Processing: We will assess global motion processing, which is believed to be a higher-level cortical function. Unlike many previous studies, our global motion stimuli will be scaled to detectability for each subject, such that differences observed across ages/subject groups can be more definitively interpreted. The results of these projects, which will reveal what aspects of visual development are more vs. less amenable to effects of visual experience, may have important implications for treating children with congenital eye disorders. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE The degree to which visual development is governed by "nature" (i.e., pre-programmed biological maturation) vs. "nurture" (i.e., visual experience) has been a long-standing topic in vision research. The current proposal investigates this question by conducting infant visual psychophysical studies in subject populations that bear relevance: preterm infants, twin infants and infants born with congenital eye disorders. The results of these studies, which we hope will reveal what aspects of visual development are more vs. less amenable to effects of visual experience, may have important implications for treating children with visual disorders.

描述（由申请人提供）：视觉发育受“先天”与“后天”支配的程度一直是视觉研究中长期存在的话题。尽管过去 50 年我们从动物研究中学到了很多东西，但对于影响人类视觉发育的因素却知之甚少。目前的提案调查了与视觉体验（“教养”）和预编程的生物成熟（“自然”）相关的因素是否对塑造视觉发育很重要。为此，我们建议对四个不同的受试者群体进行视觉心理物理学研究，以区分这些因素。 (A) 足月婴儿和 (B) 健康早产婴儿。如果早期视觉经验是视觉发育的主导力量，那么当按照出生后年龄（即出生后的年龄）绘制时，早产儿应该表现出与足月婴儿相同的发育轨迹。相比之下，如果生物成熟的影响更大，那么在绘制受孕后年龄（即受孕后的年龄）时，早产儿应该与足月婴儿相匹配。 (C) 同卵双胞胎与异卵双胞胎。虽然这两种双胞胎拥有相同的环境和父母，但他们的共同基因构成程度有所不同。我们应用生物识别双胞胎模型，该模型可以识别视觉表现中“表型”差异的比例，这些差异可以通过共享环境与基因来解释。 (D) 早期视觉输入异常的婴儿和儿童。该组（白内障、斜视和屈光参差）与健康对照组之间的比较将解决视觉处理各个方面对发育早期异常视觉体验的脆弱性。三个目标涉及不同级别的视觉处理：1) 皮层下通路处理：我们询问三种主要的视网膜原化通路，Magnocellular (M)、Parvocellular (P) 和 Koniocellular (K) 是否同等或不同地受到视觉体验的影响，通过获得对亮度、红/绿和蓝/黄刺激的对比敏感度，被认为分别是由这些途径介导的。 2) 皮层运动处理的皮层下输入：我们将使用“运动/检测”阈值比范式来估计 P 与 M 皮层下通路输入到运动处理的程度，该范式测量彩色（P 通路）与. 运动处理的亮度（M 路径）对比度。我们实验室之前的结果表明，运动的相对 P 与 M 输入随着年龄的增长而减少，在这里我们将询问这种重新加权过程是否更多地受到视觉体验或生物成熟的影响。 3）皮质运动处理：我们将评估全局运动处理，这被认为是更高级别的皮质功能。与之前的许多研究不同，我们的全局运动刺激将按每个受试者的可检测性进行调整，以便可以更明确地解释跨年龄/受试者组观察到的差异。这些项目的结果将揭示视觉发育的哪些方面更容易受到视觉体验的影响，哪些方面不太容易受到视觉体验的影响，可能对治疗患有先天性眼部疾病的儿童产生重要影响。公共健康相关性 视觉发育受“自然”（即预先编程的生物成熟）与“后天”（即视觉体验）控制的程度一直是视觉研究中的一个长期话题。目前的提案通过在相关的受试者群体中进行婴儿视觉心理物理学研究来调查这个问题：早产儿、双胞胎婴儿和出生时患有先天性眼部疾病的婴儿。我们希望这些研究的结果能够揭示视觉发育的哪些方面更容易受到视觉体验的影响，哪些方面更容易受到视觉体验的影响，这可能对治疗患有视觉障碍的儿童产生重要影响。