Attention Deficits in Amblyopia

Overview

Journal Curr Opin Psychol

Publisher Elsevier

Specialty Psychology

Date 2019 Apr 29

PMID 31030000

Citations 16

Authors

Preeti Verghese

Suzanne P McKee

Dennis M Levi

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Amblyopia is a neuro-developmental abnormality associated with deficits in a broad range of both low-level and high-level visual tasks. This is particularly true in strabismic amblyopia where fixation is unstable and there is an increased frequency of microsaccades. In light of the close association between eye movements and attention, we propose a novel hypothesis: that the cost of unstable fixation in amblyopia is a deficit in selective attention. The increased latency for saccades and manual response time with amblyopic-eye viewing is consistent with attention being distracted by unwanted fixational eye movements. We review other attention deficits in amblyopia and discuss whether they are explained by fixation instability, or whether they involve a form of neglect or suppression of the visual input from the amblyopic eye.

Citing Articles

Differential Impacts of Strabismic and Anisometropic Amblyopia on the Mesoscale Functional Organization of the Human Visual Cortex.

Nasr S, Skerswetat J, Gaier E, Malladi S, Kennedy B, Tootell R J Neurosci. 2025; 45(6).

PMID: 39824636 PMC: 11800752. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0745-24.2024.

Monocular eye-cueing shifts eye balance in amblyopia.

Wong S, Hess R, Mullen K J Vis. 2025; 25(1):6.

PMID: 39775723 PMC: 11724371. DOI: 10.1167/jov.25.1.6.

Fixation Stability Deficits in Anisometropic Amblyopia.

Zhou Y, Yu W, Ye Q, Xu Z, He Y, Yao Y Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2025; 66(1):14.

PMID: 39775696 PMC: 11717132. DOI: 10.1167/iovs.66.1.14.

Oculomotor Contributions to Foveal Crowding.

Clark A, Huynh A, Poletti M J Neurosci. 2024; 44(48.

PMID: 39455258 PMC: 11604144. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0594-24.2024.

Assessing Visual Crowding in Participants With Preperimetric Glaucoma Using Eye Movement and Manual Response Paradigms.

Tanriverdi D, Al-Nosairy K, Hoffmann M, Cornelissen F Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2024; 13(9):8.

PMID: 39235398 PMC: 11379081. DOI: 10.1167/tvst.13.9.8.

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