Direction of gaze while walking a simple route: persons with normal vision and persons with retinitis pigmentosa

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to determine whether persons with advanced vision impairment, when walking an unfamiliar route, visually sample the environment in a different manner than do persons with normal vision.

METHODS

Direction of gaze was measured in six persons with retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and in three persons with normal vision as they walked an unfamiliar, obstacle-free route while viewing the environment in a head-mounted display.

RESULTS

Persons with RP fixated over a larger area in the environment and at different features than did persons with normal vision. Persons with normal vision directed their gaze primarily ahead or at the goal, whereas persons with RP directed their gaze at objects on the walls, downward, or at the layout (i.e., edge-lines or boundaries between walls). The results also showed a significant negative correlation between the horizontal visual field extent of the RP subjects and the proportion of downward-directed fixations.

CONCLUSIONS

Persons with advanced vision impairment as a result of RP visually sample the environment in a manner different from persons with normal vision.

Nonlinear contribution of eye velocity to motion perception

The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that an extra-retinal signal combines with retinal velocity in a linear manner as described by existing models to determine perceived velocity. To do so, we utilized a method that allowed the determination of the relative contributions of the retinal-velocity and the extra-retinal signals for the perception of stimulus velocity. We determined the velocity (speed and direction) of a stimulus viewed with stationary eyes that was perceptually the same as the velocity of the stimulus viewed with moving eyes. Eye movements were governed by the tracking (or pursuit) of a separate pursuit target. The velocity-matching data were unable to be fit with a model that linearly combined a retinal-velocity signal and an extra-retinal signal. A model that was successful in explaining the data was one that takes the difference between two simple saturating non-linear functions, g and f, each symmetric about the origin, but one having an interaction term. That is, the function g has two arguments: retinal velocity, R, and eye velocity, E. The only argument to f is retinal velocity, R. Each argument has a scaling parameter. A comparison of the goodness of fits between models demonstrated that the success of the model is the interaction term, i.e. the modification of the compensating eye velocity signal by the retinal velocity prior to combination.

Mobility performance in glaucoma

PURPOSE

To determine whether glaucoma affects mobility performance and whether there is a relationship between mobility performance and stage of disease as estimated from vision-function measures.

METHODS

The mobility performance of 47 glaucoma subjects was compared with that of 47 normal-vision subjects who were of similar age. Mobility performance was assessed by the time required to complete an established travel path and the number of mobility incidents. The subjective assessment of falling and fear of falling were also compared. Vision function was assessed by measures of visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, monocular automated threshold perimetry, and suprathreshold; binocular visual fields were assessed with the Esterman test.

RESULTS

The glaucoma subjects walked on average 10% more slowly than did the normal-vision subjects. The number of people who experienced bumps, stumbles, or orientation problems was almost twice as high in the glaucoma group than the normal-vision group, but the difference did not reach statistical significance. The difference between groups also was not significant with respect to the number of people who reported falling in the past year (38% for the glaucoma group and 30% for the normal-vision group) or a fear of falling (28% for the glaucoma group and 23% for the normal-vision group). The visual fields assessed with a Humphrey 24-2 test were more highly correlated with walking speed in glaucoma than the visual fields scored by the Esterman scale or than visual acuity or contrast sensitivity.

CONCLUSIONS

Glaucoma is associated with a modest decrease in mobility performance. Walking speed decreases with severity of the disease as estimated by threshold perimetry.

Optimal spatial frequencies for discrimination of motion direction in optic flow patterns

Spatial frequency tuning functions were measured for direction discrimination of optic flow patterns. Three subjects discriminated the direction of a curved motion path using computer generated optic flow patterns composed of randomly positioned dots. Performance was measured with unfiltered patterns and with patterns that were spatially filtered across a range of spatial frequencies (center spatial frequencies of 0.4, 0.8, 1.6, 3.2, 6.4, and 9.6 c/deg). The same subjects discriminated the direction of uniform, translational motion on the fronto-parallel plane. The uniform motion patterns were also composed of randomly positioned dots, that were either unfiltered or filtered with the same spatial filters used for the optic flow patterns. The peak spatial frequency was the same for both the optic flow and uniform motion patterns. For both types of motion, a narrow band (1.5 octaves) of optimal spatial frequencies was sufficient to support the same level of performance as found with unfiltered, broadband patterns. Additional experiments demonstrated that the peak spatial frequency for the optic flow patterns varies with mean image speed in the same manner as has been reported for moving sinusoidal gratings. These findings confirm the hypothesis that the outputs of the local motion mechanisms thought to underlie the perception of uniform motion provide the inputs to, and constrain the operation of, the mechanism that processes self motion from optic flow patterns.

Perceived visual ability for independent mobility in persons with retinitis pigmentosa

PURPOSE

To determine the distribution of perceived ability for independent mobility in people who are at various stages of retinitis pigmentosa (RP).

METHODS

A questionnaire was developed to ask subjects to rate how difficult they found each of 35 mobility situations if they had no assistance. The scale was 1 (no difficulty) to 5 (extreme difficulty). In each of 127 subjects, the Rasch analysis, a latent trait analysis, was used to convert the ordinal difficulty ratings into interval measures of perceived visual ability for independent mobility.

RESULTS

Content validity of the questionnaire was shown by good separation indexes (4.55 and 8.0) and high reliability scores (0.96 and 0.98) for the person and the item parameters. Construct validity was shown with model fit statistics. Criterion validity of the questionnaire was shown by good discrimination among mobility-related behavior such as "limit independent travel," "always ask for accompaniment," "use a mobility aid," and "have a fear of falling." The mobility situation shown to require the least visual ability was "moving about in the home"; the situation requiring the most was "walking at night." Bivariate regression analysis determined that for every decade of disease progression, perceived visual ability for mobility decreased by approximately 0.5 logit, which was slightly less than 10% of the total range in the study sample. A linear combination of the visual function measures, log minimum angle of resolution, log contrast sensitivity, and log retinal area accounted for 57% of the variability in the person measure.

CONCLUSIONS

The patient-based assessment, developed to determine difficulty across a range of mobility situations, is a valid way to measure perceived ability for independent mobility. This latent trait varies systematically with the progression of RP and with visual function measures.

Eye movements affect the perceived speed of visual motion

Eye movements add a constant displacement to the visual scene, altering the retinal-image velocity. Therefore, in order to recover the real world motion, eye-movement effects must be compensated. If full compensation occurs, the perceived speed of a moving object should be the same regardless of whether the eye is stationary or moving. Using a pursue-fixate procedure in a perceptual matching paradigm, we found that eye movements systematically bias the perceived speed of the distal stimulus, indicating a lack of compensation. Speed judgments depended on the interaction between the distal stimulus size and the eye velocity relative to the distal stimulus motion. When the eyes and distal stimulus moved in the same direction, speed judgments of the distal stimulus approximately matched its retinal-image motion. When the eyes and distal stimulus moved in the opposite direction, speed judgments depended on the stimulus size. For small sizes, perceived speed was typically overestimated. For large sizes, perceived speed was underestimated. Results are explained in terms of retinal-extraretinal interactions and correlate with recent neurophysiological findings.

Mental effort required for walking: effects of retinitis pigmentosa

PURPOSE

To determine whether retinitis pigmentosa (RP) increases the mental effort required for walking.

METHODS

A dual-task methodology was used; walking speed and reaction time (RT) to randomly emitted tones were measured in 13 persons with RP and 29 persons with normal vision. Measures of RT were used to estimate the mental effort required for walking. In a second experiment, 15 persons with RP and 17 persons with normal vision navigated a "simple" and a "complex" route.

RESULTS

The RP subjects had longer RT compared with the normal-vision subjects when walking the complex but not the simple route. Normalized to each person's baseline, RT while walking the complex route was significantly correlated with log contrast sensitivity (r = -0.63) and log retinal area (r = -0.64) in the RP group. The amount of mental effort required for walking was shown to also depend on familiarity with the route.

CONCLUSIONS

Route complexity is critical in determining whether walking requires more mental effort for persons with RP than for persons with normal vision. The magnitude of mental effort required for mobility covaries with the visual impairment measures which correlate with mobility performance in RP.

Traditional measures of mobility performance and retinitis pigmentosa

This study evaluated the effects of retinitis pigmentosa (RP) on mobility performance (walking speed, mobility incidents) under conditions of normal and reduced illumination and on self-perceived mobility difficulties. The results showed that RP subjects travel more slowly than the normally sighted subjects, that both normally sighted and RP subjects travel more slowly under reduced illumination, and that RP subjects are five times more likely to have a mobility incident under reduced illumination than the normally sighted subjects. Walking speed was significantly correlated with the visual characteristics: log minimum angle of resolution (log MAR), log peak contrast sensitivity (log CS), and visual field extent. Nearly 70% of the variance in the RP subjects' walking speed was accounted for by log CS and visual field extent. Responses on a mobility questionnaire showed that 80% of the RP subjects experienced mobility difficulty. Furthermore, self-reported, mobility-related behaviors were statistically related to walking speed.

Temporal filter of the motion sensor in glaucoma

Glaucoma reportedly affects motion perception. As an initial step in characterizing glaucoma-induced changes in the motion system, we determined the range of temporal frequencies that the motion system could process. A noise-masking paradigm was used to measure contrast energy thresholds of 26 glaucoma patients at various stages of the disease and 16 age-similar subjects with normal vision. Using a sinusoidal stimulus, thresholds were measured for the discrimination of motion direction and for the stimulus embedded within a pattern of dynamic spatial noise. The noise was filtered to contain only low spatial frequencies, and the temporal-frequency spectrum of the noise was manipulated across conditions to derive the temporal filter shape of the most efficient motion sensor. The results show that the range of temporal frequencies processed by the motion system is diminished in the glaucoma group. The filters of the glaucoma subjects have reduced bandwidths compared with the normal-vision group. In addition, the upper cut-off frequency of the filters of the glaucoma subjects is correlated with stage of disease as indexed by the mean deviation of the Humphrey Visual Field Analyzer program 24-2, as well as the cup-to-disk ratio.

Speed discrimination of distal stimuli during smooth pursuit eye motion

We evaluated the hypothesis that smooth pursuit eye movements affect speed discrimination thresholds of distal stimuli because they alter the retinal image speed. Subjects judged speed differences of sine-wave gratings while they simultaneously pursued a superimposed moving bar. Speed discrimination thresholds were measured, under conditions of controlled eye movements, for grating speeds of 0.5 and 2.0 deg/sec across a range of eye velocities. Thresholds were stimulated using a Monte Carlo method based on the retinal speed hypothesis, and the simulation predictions were compared to the psychophysically determined thresholds. The simulation results provided a good match to the psychophysical data for conditions where the eye moved at a slower speed than the grating, regardless of whether the eye moved in the same or opposite direction. However, when the eye moved at a faster speed than the grating in the same direction, the psychophysical thresholds were significantly higher than predicted by the simulation. Control experiments and analyses rule out explanations based on relative motion cues, saccadic involvement, and attentional demands.

A Computational Model of the Eye Movement Effects on Motion Perception

Accurate speed and direction matches can be made between a moving stimulus viewed with a stationary eye and a moving stimulus viewed with an eye moving in the opposite direction to the stimulus. However, when the eye moves in the same direction as the distal stimulus, at a slower speed, subjects match the retinal-image motions of the stimuli rather than their distal motions (Heidenreich and Turano, 1995 Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science36 1675). Furthermore, it is only under this latter condition (and when the eye is stationary) that subjects can precisely discriminate distal stimulus speeds (Turano and Heidenreich Vision Research in press).

We present a computational model that can account for the results of all three findings. The model assumes that the extraretinal signal mirrors the eye movement. Motion information from the retinal and extraretinal sources is combined in a subtractive manner when the two signals have opposite sign. When the two signals have the same sign, they do not combine, and motion judgments are based solely on information from the retinal source.

Visual stabilization of posture in persons with central visual field loss

PURPOSE

To determine whether people with central visual field loss (CFL) show a smaller visual contribution to posture stabilization than people with normal vision and to determine the visual factors that predict the magnitude of visual stabilization in people with central visual field loss.

METHODS

Posture information was recorded in 19 subjects with CFL and in 20 subjects with normal vision. Data were collected as the subject stood in a dark environment and also as he or she viewed a stationary visual display. In both conditions, somatosensory feedback was concurrently altered. The central visual fields of the subjects with CFL were measured by static perimetry with the confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscope. Binocular visual acuity and contrast sensitivity were measured on all subjects using the ETDRS and Pelli-Robson charts, respectively. Image-displacement thresholds were measured in a subset of the subjects.

RESULTS

On average, subjects with central field loss showed a smaller visual contribution to posture stabilization than subjects with normal vision. The reduction in sway caused by visual stimuli was only 29% for the subjects with CFL compared to 41% for the subjects with normal vision. Displacement thresholds accounted for 45% of the variance in the visual stabilization magnitude of the subjects with CFL. No other visual factor significantly increased the coefficient of determination.

CONCLUSIONS

The visual self-motion cues generated by small body oscillations may be undetectable and, thus, unusable as cues to postural sway by people with central field loss.

Speed discrimination under stabilized and normal viewing conditions

To determine whether speed discrimination improves when the retinal image is stabilized against the effects of eye movements, thresholds were measured under stabilized and normal viewing conditions. In the normal viewing conditions, eye movements were recorded and used to estimate retinal-image speeds. Stimulus reference speed for sinusoidal gratings varied from 0.5 to 8.0 deg/sec. Results showed that speed discrimination thresholds, expressed as Weber ratios, decreased with increasing stimulus speed for both the normal and stabilized viewing conditions. Stabilized viewing thresholds were higher than normal viewing thresholds only at the slowest stimulus reference speed. However, when speed discrimination thresholds were expressed as a function of the estimated retinal speed, there was no difference in thresholds for the stabilized and normal viewing conditions. A retinal-image model, whereby speed discrimination depends on retinal-image motion, explains the results.

Self-motion path discrimination: effects of image stabilization

Path-deviation thresholds were measured as the effects of eye movements in the retinal flow were minimized through image stabilization. Thresholds obtained with image stabilization were compared to those obtained with unstabilized viewing to determine whether the elimination of eye movements from the retinal flow improves self-motion judgments. The results showed that, at slow forward speeds, eliminating the retinal effects of eye movements did not improve path-discrimination performance; subjects required more of an angular deviation to discriminate a circular from a straight motion path with image stabilization than with unstabilized viewing. In an effort to understand the results, eye movements were measured in unstabilized viewing conditions, and the measured eye velocities were used to estimate the retinal-image motion. The results showed that, for slow forward speeds, eye movements increased the average retinal speed, independent of the circular flow direction. At fast forward speeds, there was no significant increase in the average retinal-image speed due to eye movements. A parsimonious explanation for the decreased performance with image stabilization at the slow forward speed is that retinal-image motion was too slow to optimally stimulate the visual motion sensors.