Or Justin K N, Chang Dorita H F
Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China.
The State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Front Neurosci. 2024 Dec 3;18:1499030. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1499030. eCollection 2024.
Stereoscopic capacities vary widely across the normal population. It has become increasingly apparent, however, that mechanisms underlying stereoscopic depth perception retain a considerable degree of plasticity through adulthood. Here, we contrast the capacity for neurostimulation in the form of continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) over strategically-chosen sites in the visual cortex to bring about improvements in stereoscopic depth perception. cTBS was delivered to occipital cortex (V1/V2), lateral occipital complex (LOC), along with a control site (Cz). We measured performance on depth and luminance discrimination tasks before and after stimulation. We found a significant improvement in depth (but not luminance) discrimination performance following cTBS over LOC. By contrast, cTBS over occipital cortex and Cz did not affect performance on either task. These findings suggest that ventral (lateral-occipital) cortex is a key node for governing plasticity of stereoscopic vision in visually normal human observers. We speculate that cTBS exerts inhibitory influences that may suppress internal noise within the nervous system, leading to an improved read-out of depth features.
立体视觉能力在正常人群中差异很大。然而，越来越明显的是，立体深度感知背后的机制在成年期仍保持相当程度的可塑性。在这里，我们对比了通过在视觉皮层中经过策略性选择的部位进行连续θ波爆发刺激（cTBS）这种神经刺激形式来改善立体深度感知的能力。cTBS被施加到枕叶皮层（V1/V2）、外侧枕叶复合体（LOC）以及一个对照部位（Cz）。我们在刺激前后测量了深度和亮度辨别任务的表现。我们发现，在LOC进行cTBS后，深度（而非亮度）辨别表现有显著改善。相比之下，在枕叶皮层和Cz进行cTBS对两项任务的表现均无影响。这些发现表明，腹侧（外侧枕叶）皮层是在视觉正常的人类观察者中控制立体视觉可塑性的关键节点。我们推测，cTBS施加了抑制性影响，可能会抑制神经系统内的内部噪声，从而导致对深度特征的更好读出。
