Deficient Binocular Combination Reveals Mechanisms of Anisometropic Amblyopia

Sensory eye dominance plasticity in the human adult visual cortex

Sensory eye dominance occurs when the visual cortex weighs one eye's data more heavily than those of the other. Encouragingly, mechanisms underlying sensory eye dominance in human adults retain a certain degree of plasticity. Notably, perceptual training using dichoptically presented motion signal-noise stimuli has been shown to elicit changes in sensory eye dominance both in visually impaired and normal observers. However, the neural mechanisms underlying these learning-driven improvements are not well understood. Here, we measured changes in fMRI responses before and after a five-day visual training protocol to determine the neuroplastic changes along the visual cascade. Fifty visually normal observers received training on a dichoptic or binocular variant of a signal-in-noise (left-right) motion discrimination task over five consecutive days. We show significant shifts in sensory eye dominance following training, but only for those who received dichoptic training. Pattern analysis of fMRI responses revealed that responses of V1 and hMT+ predicted sensory eye dominance for both groups, but only before training. After dichoptic (but not binocular) visual training, responses of V1 changed significantly, and were no longer able to predict sensory eye dominance. Our data suggest that perceptual training-driven changes in eye dominance are driven by a reweighting of the two eyes' data in the primary visual cortex. These findings may provide insight into developing region-targeted rehabilitative paradigms for the visually impaired, particularly those with severe binocular imbalance.

The effect of unilateral mean luminance on binocular combination in normal and amblyopic vision

Luminance plays a modulating role in the processes of several visual tasks, which in turn provides significant information for the understanding of visual processing. Here, using a binocular phase combination paradigm, we studied the effect of unilateral changes in mean luminance on binocular combination in both normal and amblyopic vision. We found, in normal observers, attenuation of one eye's stimulus luminance with neutral density filters produces binocular phase combination similar to those of amblyopic subjects. Correspondingly, in amblyopic observers, reduction of the fellow eye's stimulus luminance produces binocular phase combination similar to those of normal subjects. These phenomena could be explained by an attenuated contribution of the filtered eye to the binocular phase percept due to reduced gain-control. The findings have major implications both for the study of binocular combination and for amblyopia treatment.

Contrast and phase combination in binocular vision

BACKGROUND

How the visual system combines information from the two eyes to form a unitary binocular representation of the external world is a fundamental question in vision science that has been the focus of many psychophysical and physiological investigations. Ding & Sperling (2006) measured perceived phase of the cyclopean image, and developed a binocular combination model in which each eye exerts gain control on the other eye's signal and over the other eye's gain control. Critically, the relative phase of the monocular sine-waves plays a central role.

METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

We used the Ding-Sperling paradigm but measured both the perceived contrast and phase of cyclopean images in three hundred and eighty combinations of base contrast, interocular contrast ratio, eye origin of the probe, and interocular phase difference. We found that the perceived contrast of the cyclopean image was independent of the relative phase of the two monocular gratings, although the perceived phase depended on the relative phase and contrast ratio of the monocular images. We developed a new multi-pathway contrast-gain control model (MCM) that elaborates the Ding-Sperling binocular combination model in two ways: (1) phase and contrast of the cyclopean images are computed in separate pathways, although with shared cross-eye contrast-gain control; and (2) phase-independent local energy from the two monocular images are used in binocular contrast combination. With three free parameters, the model yielded an excellent account of data from all the experimental conditions.

CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE

Binocular phase combination depends on the relative phase and contrast ratio of the monocular images but binocular contrast combination is phase-invariant. Our findings suggest the involvement of at least two separate pathways in binocular combination.