Visual distortions in human amblyopia are correlated with deficits in contrast sensitivity.

IF 4 2区 医学 Q1 NEUROSCIENCES
Farzaneh Olianezhad,Jianzhong Jin,Sohrab Najafian,Akihito Maruya,Qasim Zaidi,Jose-Manuel Alonso
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Abstract

Amblyopia (lazy eye) is a developmental disorder of the visual cortex that causes deficits in visual acuity and shape perception. The loss of visual acuity is thought to originate from weakened cortical responses to stimuli. Here, we provide evidence for a similar mechanism to explain distortions in shape perception. We introduce a computational model that simulates perceptual distortions of grating patterns drawn by humans with amblyopia (Barrett et al., 2003). The model simulates a large variety of distortions by performing a weighted sum of rectified sinusoidal gratings (average: 3.3 gratings ∼6 times larger than foveal receptive fields in the primary visual cortex) with different dark-light duty cycles. The simulations accurately reproduce self-reported perceptions of amblyopic patients and decrease drawing-percept differences when ideal percepts (stimuli) are replaced with simulated percepts (9.03±12.37%, p=0.0002, Wilcoxon test comparing normalized Laplacian pyramid distances, Laparra et al., 2016). The simulations also reveal an increase in the number of stimulus orientations contributing to visual percepts in amblyopia, and a strong correlation between contrast sensitivity deficits and both magnitude of perceived visual distortions (r=0.96, p=0.0007) and predicted spread of cortical activation (r=0.82, p=0.02). The results also demonstrate a compensatory shift in the spatial frequency distribution of cortical filters in amblyopia, which closely resembles the spatial frequency shift caused by contrast reduction in thalamocortical inputs of male cats. Taken together, our results indicate that amblyopia compensates weakened cortical responses by increasing the spread of cortical activation to include neurons with mismatched stimulus preferences that cause perceptual distortions.Significance Statement Amblyopia (lazy eye) affects millions of humans worldwide, yet the neural mechanisms underlying its perceptual deficits remain poorly understood. Here, we introduce a computational model that accurately simulates a large variety of amblyopic perceptual distortions with a weighted-sum of rectified sinusoidal gratings. The simulations reveal strong correlations among amblyopia deficits in contrast sensitivity, distortions in shape perception, and predicted cortical spread. Based on these results, we propose a cortical mechanism that compensates amblyopia weakened responses by increasing cortical spread to neurons with mismatched stimulus preferences that distort perception. Taken together, our results provide a mechanistic framework that links visual deficits in contrast sensitivity with distortions in shape perception while providing new insights into how developmental visual disorders alter sensory processing.
人类弱视的视觉扭曲与对比敏感度的缺陷有关。
弱视(弱视)是一种视觉皮层发育障碍,导致视觉敏锐度和形状感知缺陷。视力的丧失被认为是由于皮层对刺激的反应减弱所致。在这里,我们为解释形状感知扭曲的类似机制提供了证据。我们引入了一个计算模型来模拟弱视患者绘制的光栅图案的感知扭曲(Barrett et al., 2003)。该模型通过执行具有不同暗光占空比的整流正弦光栅(平均:3.3个光栅~ 6倍于初级视觉皮层的中央凹感受野)的加权和来模拟各种各样的畸变。当理想知觉(刺激)被模拟知觉取代时,模拟能准确再现弱视患者自我报告的知觉,并减少绘制知觉差异(9.03±12.37%,p=0.0002, Wilcoxon检验比较归一化拉普拉斯金字塔距离,腹腔镜等人,2016)。模拟还揭示了刺激方向数量的增加有助于弱视的视觉感知,对比敏感度缺陷与感知视觉扭曲的程度(r=0.96, p=0.0007)和皮质激活的预测范围(r=0.82, p=0.02)之间存在很强的相关性。结果还表明,弱视皮层滤光器的空间频率分布存在代偿性偏移,这与雄性猫丘脑皮层输入对比度降低引起的空间频率偏移非常相似。综上所述,我们的研究结果表明,弱视通过增加皮层激活的扩散来补偿减弱的皮层反应,包括具有不匹配的刺激偏好的神经元,从而导致知觉扭曲。弱视(弱视)影响着全世界数百万人,然而其感知缺陷背后的神经机制仍然知之甚少。在这里,我们引入了一个计算模型,该模型精确地模拟了各种各样的弱视感知畸变,校正正弦光栅的加权和。模拟结果显示,弱视缺陷在对比度敏感度、形状感知扭曲和预测的皮质扩散方面存在很强的相关性。基于这些结果,我们提出了一种皮层机制,通过增加皮层扩散到具有不匹配的刺激偏好的神经元来补偿弱视减弱的反应,从而扭曲感知。综上所述,我们的研究结果提供了一个机制框架,将对比敏感度的视觉缺陷与形状感知的扭曲联系起来,同时为发育性视觉障碍如何改变感觉加工提供了新的见解。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Journal of Neuroscience
Journal of Neuroscience 医学-神经科学
CiteScore
9.30
自引率
3.80%
发文量
1164
审稿时长
12 months
期刊介绍: JNeurosci (ISSN 0270-6474) is an official journal of the Society for Neuroscience. It is published weekly by the Society, fifty weeks a year, one volume a year. JNeurosci publishes papers on a broad range of topics of general interest to those working on the nervous system. Authors now have an Open Choice option for their published articles
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