Predictors of Sensitivity to Perceptual Learning in Children With Infantile Nystagmus

Huurneman, Bianca; Boonstra, F. Nienke; Goossens, Jeroen

doi:10.1167/iovs.17-21913

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…In addition, maximum reading speed improved significantly in present study (15 ± 2 wpm), but not in the first (0 ± 1 wpm). Average learning effects on single letter discrimination and crowding extent, on the other hand, were remarkably similar to those reported earlier ( Huurneman et al, 2017 ). The small impact of training on single letter acuity was expected, since there were fewer uncrowded than crowded letter training sessions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…After ten training sessions of 350 trials each, both groups of children had improved vision even though their oculomotor behavior remained unaltered ( Huurneman et al, 2016a ). There was some task-specificity in the learning effects of the uncrowded versus crowded training with larger improvements of uncrowded acuity in the uncrowded training group and larger improvements in crowded acuity in the crowded training group ( Huurneman et al, 2017 ), but there was considerable transfer to visual acuity charts, stereopsis and reading for both ( Huurneman et al, 2016a , b , c ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Broad and Long-Lasting Vision Improvements in Youth With Infantile Nystagmus After Home Training With a Perceptual Learning App

Huurneman¹,

Goossens

2021

Front. Neurosci.

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Current treatments for infantile nystagmus (IN), focused on dampening the oscillating eye movements, yield little to no improvement in visual functioning. It makes sense, however, to treat the visual impairments associated with IN with tailored sensory training. Recently, we developed such a training, targeting visual crowding as an important bottleneck in visual functioning with an eye-movement engaging letter discrimination task. This training improved visual performance of children with IN, but most children had not reached plateau performance after 10 supervised training sessions (3,500 trials). Here, we evaluate the effects of prolonged perceptual learning (14,000 trials) in 7-18-year-old children with IN and test the feasibility of tablet-based, at-home intervention. Results demonstrate that prolonged home-based perceptual training results in stable, long lasting visual acuity improvements at distance and near, with remarkably good transfer to reading and even stereopsis. Improvements on self-reported functional vision scores underline the clinical relevance of perceptual learning with e-health apps for individuals with IN.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Broad and Long-Lasting Vision Improvements in Youth With Infantile Nystagmus After Home Training With a Perceptual Learning App

Huurneman¹,

Goossens

2021

Front. Neurosci.

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“…Examining the temporal aspect of visual processing in subjects that experience continuous instability of the retinal image is very important in deciphering and understanding visual function in nystagmus. Previous studies investigating IN mainly focused on static spatial functions of the visual system such as visual acuity 42 , crowding 43 , and CSF (contrast sensitivity function) 54,81 . Here we focused on the temporal aspect of the visual system and binocular summation.…”

Section: Fusion Fusion Is a Clinical Condition That Can Affect Binocmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monocular and Binocular Temporal Visual Perception of Infantile Nystagmus

Moshkovitz

Lev

Polat

2020

Sci Rep

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duration, is defined as the point at which further stimulus presentation time does not contribute to enhanced performance 6,24. In some studies, critical duration refers to the time in which contrast sensitivity reaches 90% of the maximal value 24,25. Critical duration can be influenced by spatial and temporal parameters. Studies suggest that the period of temporal integration is affected by spatial frequency; the higher the spatial frequency is, the longer will be the time needed for integration 19. In the literature, the range of critical duration is between 160 and 200 19,26. In addition, critical duration can change as a result of cortical deprivation in cases such as amblyopia 27-31 or neurological disease 29. Nystagmus is a form of spontaneous oscillation of the eyes, which results in excessive motion of images on the retina, accompanied by poor vision including a reduction in visual acuity 32-35. In normal fixation, the eyes are not still; they move at a velocity of 3 minutes of arc in one second 36. Infantile nystagmus (IN) is accompanied by reduced vision in both eyes during the critical periods of life 37-39. The prevalence of infantile nystagmus is 1 to 1000-6000 34,35. The most common form of infantile nystagmus is afferent nystagmus; it is caused by impairment of central vision in early life, e.g., albinism or congenital cataract 35,40. Albinism is a heterogeneous group of congenital disorders affecting melanin synthesis. A few weeks after birth, nystagmus can appear in albino subjects 41. In research investigating nystagmus, albinos are one of the main participants 42-44. In addition, if efferent, it is an idiopathic nystagmus, without any involvement of ocular or systemic pathology. The onset is about 2-3 months after birth and it persists throughout life 45,46. In cases of nystagmus, contrast sensitivity is reduced 35,40,47-49. Vision impairment of cortical origin, such as amblyopia, is characterized by deficits in normal processing such as binocular summation and critical duration. In this study we investigated how binocular and monocular processing was affected in IN due to visual impairment. We hypothesized that in nystagmus, similarly to amblyopia, we would observe absent or diminished binocular summation from the two eyes, and that the critical duration differs from normal sighted vision.

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“…They have mainly been physical worksheets and computer programs. For example, computer-generated visual stimuli for visual training [10], such as stimuli created with the MATLAB toolbox called Psychtoolbox [11], are available. Other examples of well-known video games used in visual training are Ratchet & Clank and Lumies [12].…”

Section: Families' Involvement In Home-based Visual Training a Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Adaptive, Comprehensive Application to Support Home-Based Visual Training for Children With Low Vision

et al. 2019

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Low vision is a visual impairment that cannot be improved by standard vision aids such as glasses. Therefore, to improve their visual skills, people affected by low vision usually follow a visual training program planned and supervised by an expert in this field. Visual training is especially suitable for children because of their plasticity for learning. However, due to a lack of specialists, training sessions are usually less frequent than optimal. Thus, home-based visual training has emerged as a solution to this problem because it can be undertaken by experts and families together. We implemented the Visual Stimulation on the Internet (EVIN) application, which provides comprehensive visual training tasks through games. It also provides reports on children's performance in these visual training tasks. Although EVIN has shown its usefulness in previous works, two main solutions are needed: (i) a support setup to help experts and families work together to address, among other things, the large variety of exercises and different configurations that can be prescribed and (ii) a rigorous experimental design to compare children trained with EVIN and those trained with traditional materials. To face these challenges, we present an adaptive version of EVIN that provides a new design tool that allows experts to plan visual training tasks through templates in advance. In addition, we developed new metrics and reports to achieve a more accurate assessment of a child's improvement. Among other results, it allowed us to develop an reliable experiment to evaluate significant improvements in children trained with EVIN.

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Predictors of Sensitivity to Perceptual Learning in Children With Infantile Nystagmus

Cited by 8 publications

References 59 publications

Broad and Long-Lasting Vision Improvements in Youth With Infantile Nystagmus After Home Training With a Perceptual Learning App

Broad and Long-Lasting Vision Improvements in Youth With Infantile Nystagmus After Home Training With a Perceptual Learning App

Monocular and Binocular Temporal Visual Perception of Infantile Nystagmus

An Adaptive, Comprehensive Application to Support Home-Based Visual Training for Children With Low Vision

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