Visual Crowding Reveals Field- and Axis-Specific Cortical Miswiring After Long-Term Axial Misalignment in Strabismic Patients Without Amblyopia

Overview

Journal Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci

Specialty Ophthalmology

Date 2023 Jan 18

PMID 36652265

Authors

Yiru Huang

Zitian Liu

Zidong Chen

Zongyi Zhan

Le Gao

Jingyi Hu

Yanyan Wu

Fang-Fang Yan

Daming Deng

Chang-Bing Huang

Minbin Yu

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Purpose: Inspired by physiological and neuroimaging findings that revealed squint-induced modification of cortical volume and visual receptive field in early visual areas, we hypothesized that strabismic eyes without amblyopia manifest an increase in critical spacing of visual crowding, an essential bottleneck on object recognition and reliable psychophysical index of cortical organization.

Methods: We used real-time eye tracking to ensure gaze-contingent display and examined visual crowding in patients with horizontal concomitant strabismus (both esotropia and exotropia) but without amblyopia and age-matched normal controls.

Results: Nineteen patients with exotropia (12 men, mean ± SD = 22.89 ± 7.82 years), 21 patients with esotropia (10 men, mean ± SD = 23.48 ± 6.95 years), and 14 age-matched normal controls (7 men, mean ± SD = 23.07 ± 1.07 years) participated in this study. We found that patients with strabismus without amblyopia showed significantly larger critical spacing with nasotemporal asymmetry in only the radial axis that related to the strabismus pattern, with exotropia exhibiting stronger temporal hemifield crowding and esotropia exhibiting stronger nasal hemifield crowding, in both the deviated and fixating eyes. Moreover, the magnitude of crowding change was related to the duration and degree of strabismic deviation.

Conclusions: Using visual crowding as a psychophysical index of cortical organization, our study demonstrated significantly greater peripheral visual crowding with nasotemporal asymmetry in only the radial axis in patients with strabismus without amblyopia, indicating the existence of hemifield- and axis-specific miswiring of cortical processing in object recognition induced by long-term adaptation to ocular misalignment.

Citing Articles

Cortical Reorganization After Optical Alignment in Strabismic Patients Outside of Critical Period.

Huang Y, Liu Z, Wang M, Gao L, Wu Y, Hu J Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2023; 64(11):5.

PMID: 37535007 PMC: 10408769. DOI: 10.1167/iovs.64.11.5.

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