Zhou Bin, Pöppel Ernst, Wang Lingyan, Yang Taoxi, Zaytseva Yuliya, Bao Yan
Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Psych J. 2016 Sep;5(3):145-60. doi: 10.1002/pchj.141.
Single cases may lead to unexpected hypotheses in psychology. We retrospectively analyzed single case studies that suggested organizational principles along the early visual pathway, which have remained unanswered until now.
In spite of the inhomogeneity of sensitivity, paradoxically the visual field on the subjective level appears to be homogeneous; constancy of brightness of supra-threshold stimuli throughout the visual field is claimed to be responsible for homogeneity; specific summation properties of retinal ganglion cells are hypothesized to guarantee this effect.
With a brain-injured patient having suffered a partial visual field loss it can be shown that color induction is a retinal phenomenon; lateral inhibitory processes at the level of amacrine cells are hypothesized as neural network. Third case: In a patient having suffered a bilateral occipital lobe infarction, some functional recovery has been demonstrated; divergence and convergence of projection in the ascending neural pathway are suggested as a structural basis for recovery. Slowed down binocular rivalry discloses a sequential mechanism in the construction of a visual percept. Fourth case: The pre-wired projection of the retina to the visual cortex in spite of a severe squint of one eye is confirmed, but paradoxically some local neuroplasticity is also suggested. Fifth case: Using habituation of local sensitivity in the visual field and its resetting by interhemispheric interactions as an experimental paradigm, it is suggested that spatial attention is controlled at the midbrain level. Sixth case: Observations on residual vision or "blindsight" support the hypothesis that the visual cortex is the one and only structure responsible for visual perception on a conscious level. The unifying principle of these retrospective analyses is that subjective visual phenomena can lead to unexpected but testable hypotheses of neural processing on the structural and functional level in the early visual pathway.
个别案例可能会在心理学领域引发意想不到的假设。我们回顾性分析了一些单病例研究，这些研究提出了早期视觉通路中的组织原则，而这些原则至今仍未得到解答。
尽管敏感性存在不均匀性，但自相矛盾的是，主观层面的视野似乎是均匀的；超阈值刺激在整个视野中的亮度恒常性被认为是造成均匀性的原因；视网膜神经节细胞的特定总和特性被假设为保证了这种效果。
对于一名患有部分视野缺损的脑损伤患者，可以证明颜色诱导是一种视网膜现象；无长突细胞水平的侧向抑制过程被假设为神经网络。第三个案例：在一名患有双侧枕叶梗死的患者中，已证明有一些功能恢复；上行神经通路中投射的发散和会聚被认为是恢复的结构基础。双眼竞争减缓揭示了视觉感知构建中的一种顺序机制。第四个案例：尽管一只眼睛严重斜视，但视网膜向视觉皮层的预连线投射得到了证实，但自相矛盾的是，也有人提出了一些局部神经可塑性。第五个案例：以视野中局部敏感性的习惯化及其通过半球间相互作用的重置作为实验范式，有人提出空间注意力是在中脑水平受到控制的。第六个案例：对残余视力或“盲视”的观察支持了这样一种假设，即视觉皮层是有意识水平上唯一负责视觉感知的结构。这些回顾性分析的统一原则是，主观视觉现象可以在早期视觉通路的结构和功能层面上引发关于神经处理的意想不到但可检验的假设。
