Degraded attentional modulation of cortical neural populations in strabismic amblyopia

Behavioral studies have reported reduced spatial attention in amblyopia, a developmental disorder of spatial vision. However, the neural populations in the visual cortex linked with these behavioral spatial attention deficits have not been identified. Here, we use functional MRI-informed electroence...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of vision (Charlottesville, Va.) Va.), 2016, Vol.16 (3), p.16-16
Main Authors: Hou, Chuan, Kim, Yee-Joon, Lai, Xin Jie, Verghese, Preeti
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Amblyopia - physiopathology
Attention - physiology
Electroencephalography
Female
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Middle Aged
Neurons - physiology
Strabismus - physiopathology
Visual Cortex - physiology
Young Adult
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Summary:Behavioral studies have reported reduced spatial attention in amblyopia, a developmental disorder of spatial vision. However, the neural populations in the visual cortex linked with these behavioral spatial attention deficits have not been identified. Here, we use functional MRI-informed electroencephalography source imaging to measure the effect of attention on neural population activity in the visual cortex of human adult strabismic amblyopes who were stereoblind. We show that compared with controls, the modulatory effects of selective visual attention on the input from the amblyopic eye are substantially reduced in the primary visual cortex (V1) as well as in extrastriate visual areas hV4 and hMT+. Degraded attentional modulation is also found in the normal-acuity fellow eye in areas hV4 and hMT+ but not in V1. These results provide electrophysiological evidence that abnormal binocular input during a developmental critical period may impact cortical connections between the visual cortex and higher level cortices beyond the known amblyopic losses in V1 and V2, suggesting that a deficit of attentional modulation in the visual cortex is an important component of the functional impairment in amblyopia. Furthermore, we find that degraded attentional modulation in V1 is correlated with the magnitude of interocular suppression and the depth of amblyopia. These results support the view that the visual suppression often seen in strabismic amblyopia might be a form of attentional neglect of the visual input to the amblyopic eye.
ISSN:1534-7362
1534-7362
DOI:10.1167/16.3.16