The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, San Francisco, CA, 94115, USA.
Sci Rep. 2022 Jun 11;12(1):9660. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-13747-4.
Long-term and chronic visual suppression to the non-preferred eye in early childhood is a key factor in developing amblyopia, as well as a critical barrier to treat amblyopia. To explore the relationship between selective visual attention and amblyopic suppression and its role in the success of amblyopic training, we used EEG source-imaging to show that training human adults with strabismic and anisometropic amblyopia with dichoptic attention tasks improved attentional modulation of neural populations in the primary visual cortex (V1) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS). We also used psychophysics to show that training reduced interocular suppression along with visual acuity and stereoacuity improvements. Importantly, our results revealed that the reduction of interocular suppression by training was significantly correlated with the improvement of selective visual attention in both training-related and -unrelated tasks in the amblyopic eye, relative to the fellow eye. These findings suggest a relation between interocular suppression and selective visual attention bias between eyes in amblyopic vision, and that dichoptic training with high-attention demand tasks in the amblyopic eye might be an effective way to treat amblyopia.
儿童早期对非优势眼的长期和慢性视觉抑制是导致弱视的关键因素，也是治疗弱视的关键障碍。为了探索选择性视觉注意与弱视抑制之间的关系及其在弱视训练成功中的作用，我们使用 EEG 源成像技术表明，用双眼视注意任务对斜视性和屈光不正性弱视的成年人进行训练，可改善初级视觉皮层（V1）和顶内沟（IPS）中神经群体的注意力调制。我们还使用心理物理学方法表明，训练可降低双眼抑制，同时提高视力和立体锐度。重要的是，我们的结果表明，与对侧眼相比，训练引起的双眼抑制的降低与弱视眼中与训练相关和不相关任务的选择性视觉注意力的改善显著相关。这些发现表明，在弱视视觉中，双眼抑制与双眼之间的选择性视觉注意力偏差之间存在关系，并且在弱视眼中进行高注意力需求任务的双眼训练可能是治疗弱视的有效方法。
