Cutaneous Sensitivity after Prolonged Visual Deprivation

Zubek, John P.; Flye, J.; Aftanas, Marion S.

doi:10.1126/science.144.3626.1591

Cited by 50 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Reexamining the effects of prolonged visual deprivation on the tactile acuity of sighted participants, Kauffman et al [28] reported that participants' ability to discriminate Braille characters pressed against the passive fingertip improved after five days of visual deprivation, a finding in general agreement with the early literature [1]–[6]. Merabet et al [27] further showed that transcranial magnetic stimulation applied to the occipital cortex disrupted the ability to distinguish Braille characters among participants who had been blindfolded (and trained on Braille) for five days, but did not affect Braille character discrimination among a control group that had been trained without blindfolding.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 61%

“…In contrast to short-term visual deprivation, several studies have reported that prolonged visual deprivation does drive tactile acuity enhancement [5], [6], [27], [28]. Surprisingly, however, Merabet et al [27] found that five days of visual deprivation coupled with Braille training were insufficient to improve participants' performance on the GOT beyond the levels of improvement observed in a non-visually-deprived Braille-trained control group (a significant effect of visual deprivation was found only on a Braille character recognition task, not on the GOT).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Zubek et al [5], [6] demonstrated that seven days of visual deprivation produced tactile acuity enhancement, as assessed by two-point and tactile fusion tasks; the investigators observed facilitatory effects of visual deprivation when participants were completely light deprived, and also (but to a lesser degree) when participants were deprived of patterned vision.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Short-Term Visual Deprivation Does Not Enhance Passive Tactile Spatial Acuity

et al. 2011

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An important unresolved question in sensory neuroscience is whether, and if so with what time course, tactile perception is enhanced by visual deprivation. In three experiments involving 158 normally sighted human participants, we assessed whether tactile spatial acuity improves with short-term visual deprivation over periods ranging from under 10 to over 110 minutes. We used an automated, precisely controlled two-interval forced-choice grating orientation task to assess each participant's ability to discern the orientation of square-wave gratings pressed against the stationary index finger pad of the dominant hand. A two-down one-up staircase (Experiment 1) or a Bayesian adaptive procedure (Experiments 2 and 3) was used to determine the groove width of the grating whose orientation each participant could reliably discriminate. The experiments consistently showed that tactile grating orientation discrimination does not improve with short-term visual deprivation. In fact, we found that tactile performance degraded slightly but significantly upon a brief period of visual deprivation (Experiment 1) and did not improve over periods of up to 110 minutes of deprivation (Experiments 2 and 3). The results additionally showed that grating orientation discrimination tends to improve upon repeated testing, and confirmed that women significantly outperform men on the grating orientation task. We conclude that, contrary to two recent reports but consistent with an earlier literature, passive tactile spatial acuity is not enhanced by short-term visual deprivation. Our findings have important theoretical and practical implications. On the theoretical side, the findings set limits on the time course over which neural mechanisms such as crossmodal plasticity may operate to drive sensory changes; on the practical side, the findings suggest that researchers who compare tactile acuity of blind and sighted participants should not blindfold the sighted participants.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Short-Term Visual Deprivation Does Not Enhance Passive Tactile Spatial Acuity

et al. 2011

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“…This study is noteworthy for research on multisensory interactions and plasticity because it shows a strong link between vision and pain. This link is supported by a previous report of increased pain sensitivity in sighted volunteers who were temporarily visually deprived [11]. Studies conducted on sighted participants also showed that the visual context can modulate the perception both of acute [3] and chronic pain [4].…”

supporting

confidence: 78%

Focus on pain in the blind

Mancini

2013

Pain

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“…Participants also had to answer questionnaires regarding attention and anxiety towards painful encounters in daily life, since these factors are known to influence pain perception [28]. Based on our previous results in congenitally blind individuals [1] and the results by Zubek and colleagues [29] showing that prolonged visual deprivation leads to increased sensitivity to pain, we hypothesized that LB would also show increased pain sensitivity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pain Perception Is Increased in Congenital but Not Late Onset Blindness

et al. 2014

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There is now ample evidence that blind individuals outperform sighted individuals in various tasks involving the non-visual senses. In line with these results, we recently showed that visual deprivation from birth leads to an increased sensitivity to pain. As many studies have shown that congenitally and late blind individuals show differences in their degree of compensatory plasticity, we here address the question whether late blind individuals also show hypersensitivity to nociceptive stimulation. We therefore compared pain thresholds and responses to supra-threshold nociceptive stimuli in congenitally blind, late blind and normally sighted volunteers. Participants also filled in questionnaires measuring attention and anxiety towards pain in everyday life. Results show that late blind participants have pain thresholds and ratings of supra-threshold heat nociceptive stimuli similar to the normally sighted, whereas congenitally blind participants are hypersensitive to nociceptive thermal stimuli. Furthermore, results of the pain questionnaires did not allow to discriminate late blind from normal sighted participants, whereas congenitally blind individuals had a different pattern of responses. Taken together, these results suggest that enhanced sensitivity to pain following visual deprivation is likely due to neuroplastic changes related to the early loss of vision.

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Cutaneous Sensitivity after Prolonged Visual Deprivation

Cited by 50 publications

References 8 publications

Short-Term Visual Deprivation Does Not Enhance Passive Tactile Spatial Acuity

Short-Term Visual Deprivation Does Not Enhance Passive Tactile Spatial Acuity

Focus on pain in the blind

Pain Perception Is Increased in Congenital but Not Late Onset Blindness

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