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Testing geometry and 3D perception in children following vision restoring cataract-removal surgery

As neuroscience and rehabilitative techniques advance, age-old questions concerning the visual experience of those who gain sight after blindness, once thought to be philosophical alone, take center stage and become the target for scientific inquiries. In this study, we employ a battery of visual pe...

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Autores principales: Maimon, Amber, Netzer, Ophir, Heimler, Benedetta, Amedi, Amir
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9879291/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36711132
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.962817
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author Maimon, Amber
Netzer, Ophir
Heimler, Benedetta
Amedi, Amir
author_facet Maimon, Amber
Netzer, Ophir
Heimler, Benedetta
Amedi, Amir
author_sort Maimon, Amber
collection PubMed
description As neuroscience and rehabilitative techniques advance, age-old questions concerning the visual experience of those who gain sight after blindness, once thought to be philosophical alone, take center stage and become the target for scientific inquiries. In this study, we employ a battery of visual perception tasks to study the unique experience of a small group of children who have undergone vision-restoring cataract removal surgery as part of the Himalayan Cataract Project. We tested their abilities to perceive in three dimensions (3D) using a binocular rivalry task and the Brock string task, perceive visual illusions, use cross-modal mappings between touch and vision, and spatially group based on geometric cues. Some of the children in this study gained a sense of sight for the first time in their lives, having been born with bilateral congenital cataracts, while others suffered late-onset blindness in one eye alone. This study simultaneously supports yet raises further questions concerning Hubel and Wiesel’s critical periods theory and provides additional insight into Molyneux’s problem, the ability to correlate vision with touch quickly. We suggest that our findings present a relatively unexplored intermediate stage of 3D vision development. Importantly, we spotlight some essential geometrical perception visual abilities that strengthen the idea that spontaneous geometry intuitions arise independently from visual experience (and education), thus replicating and extending previous studies. We incorporate a new model, not previously explored, of testing children with congenital cataract removal surgeries who perform the task via vision. In contrast, previous work has explored these abilities in the congenitally blind via touch. Taken together, our findings provide insight into the development of what is commonly known as the visual system in the visually deprived and highlight the need to further empirically explore an amodal, task-based interpretation of specializations in the development and structure of the brain. Moreover, we propose a novel objective method, based on a simple binocular rivalry task and the Brock string task, for determining congenital (early) vs. late blindness where medical history and records are partial or lacking (e.g., as is often the case in cataract removal cases).
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spelling pubmed-98792912023-01-27 Testing geometry and 3D perception in children following vision restoring cataract-removal surgery Maimon, Amber Netzer, Ophir Heimler, Benedetta Amedi, Amir Front Neurosci Neuroscience As neuroscience and rehabilitative techniques advance, age-old questions concerning the visual experience of those who gain sight after blindness, once thought to be philosophical alone, take center stage and become the target for scientific inquiries. In this study, we employ a battery of visual perception tasks to study the unique experience of a small group of children who have undergone vision-restoring cataract removal surgery as part of the Himalayan Cataract Project. We tested their abilities to perceive in three dimensions (3D) using a binocular rivalry task and the Brock string task, perceive visual illusions, use cross-modal mappings between touch and vision, and spatially group based on geometric cues. Some of the children in this study gained a sense of sight for the first time in their lives, having been born with bilateral congenital cataracts, while others suffered late-onset blindness in one eye alone. This study simultaneously supports yet raises further questions concerning Hubel and Wiesel’s critical periods theory and provides additional insight into Molyneux’s problem, the ability to correlate vision with touch quickly. We suggest that our findings present a relatively unexplored intermediate stage of 3D vision development. Importantly, we spotlight some essential geometrical perception visual abilities that strengthen the idea that spontaneous geometry intuitions arise independently from visual experience (and education), thus replicating and extending previous studies. We incorporate a new model, not previously explored, of testing children with congenital cataract removal surgeries who perform the task via vision. In contrast, previous work has explored these abilities in the congenitally blind via touch. Taken together, our findings provide insight into the development of what is commonly known as the visual system in the visually deprived and highlight the need to further empirically explore an amodal, task-based interpretation of specializations in the development and structure of the brain. Moreover, we propose a novel objective method, based on a simple binocular rivalry task and the Brock string task, for determining congenital (early) vs. late blindness where medical history and records are partial or lacking (e.g., as is often the case in cataract removal cases). Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-01-11 /pmc/articles/PMC9879291/ /pubmed/36711132 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.962817 Text en Copyright © 2023 Maimon, Netzer, Heimler and Amedi. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Maimon, Amber
Netzer, Ophir
Heimler, Benedetta
Amedi, Amir
Testing geometry and 3D perception in children following vision restoring cataract-removal surgery
title Testing geometry and 3D perception in children following vision restoring cataract-removal surgery
title_full Testing geometry and 3D perception in children following vision restoring cataract-removal surgery
title_fullStr Testing geometry and 3D perception in children following vision restoring cataract-removal surgery
title_full_unstemmed Testing geometry and 3D perception in children following vision restoring cataract-removal surgery
title_short Testing geometry and 3D perception in children following vision restoring cataract-removal surgery
title_sort testing geometry and 3d perception in children following vision restoring cataract-removal surgery
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9879291/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36711132
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.962817
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