Effect of preconditioning visual stimulus duration on visual-evoked responses to a subsequent test flash in Down's syndrome and nonretarded individuals.

Visual-evoked responses to a visual test flash preceded by three different durations of a visual conditioning flash having the same intensity and form were recorded from 8 Down's syndrome subjects and 9 nonretarded CA-matched control subjects. Both groups showed a significant decrease in visual-evoked response perimeters to the test flash as the duration of the visual conditioning flash increased from 1 to 100 msec. For the 1000-msec condition, perimeters of Down's syndrome subjects showed a significant increase, and this was significantly greater than the nonretarded group. These results suggest that Down's syndrome individuals have deficits in their neural processing of sensory information.?23Author