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- Title
Hyper-vision in a patient with central and paracentral vision loss reflects cortical reorganization.
- Authors
CLARA CASCO; GIANLUCA CAMPANA; ALBA GRIECO; SILVANA MUSETTI; SALVATORE PERRONE
- Abstract
SM, a 21-year-old female, presents an extensive central scotoma (30 deg) with dense absolute scotoma (visual acuity = 10/100) in the macular area (10 deg) due to Stargardt's disease. We provide behavioral evidence of cortical plastic reorganization since the patient could perform several visual tasks with her poor-vision eyes better than controls, although high spatial frequency sensitivity and visual acuity are severely impaired. Between 2.5-deg and 12-deg eccentricities, SM presented (1) normal acuity for crowded letters, provided stimulus size is above acuity thresholds for single letters; (2) a two-fold sensitivity increase (d-prime) with respect to controls in a simple search task; and (3) largely above-threshold performance in a lexical decision task carried out randomly by controls. SM's hyper-vision may reflect a long-term sensory gain specific for unimpaired low spatial-frequency mechanisms, which may result from modifications in response properties due to practice-dependent changes in excitatory/inhibitory intracortical connections.
- Subjects
SCOTOMA; VISION disorders; VISION; VISUAL acuity; ADRENOCORTICAL hormones
- Publication
Visual Neuroscience, 2003, Vol 20, Issue 5, p501
- ISSN
0952-5238
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/s0952523803205046