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Biomedical subjects

J D Holtzman

Publications and source records attributed to J D Holtzman.

16 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1988

Mental imagery and sensory experience in congenital blindness.

Imagery of congenitally blind and normally sighted subjects was compared in two experiments. In the first, subjects were asked to estimate how far away objects appeared in images. The results showed that blind subjects imaged objects "within arms' reach", and with only a slight tendency to image larger objects farther from them. In contrast, sighted subjects tended to image larger objects as if they were farther away. In addition, unlike the sighted, blind subjects' images also failed to overflow an "image space" of fixed size. Finally, blind subjects were, with one exception, unable to mimic successfully the responses of a sighted person, when explicitly asked to do so. In the second experiment, subjects pointed to the left and right sides of three objects imaged at three distances. Sighted and blind groups both showed a decrease in pointing span with the size of the object, but only the sighted subjects showed a decrease with increased image distance, in accordance with the laws of perspective.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Speech without conscious awareness.

Following commissurotomy, it is usually the case that information presented to the left hemisphere can be named and described, while information presented to the mute, right hemisphere cannot be spoken about. In the present study, it was discovered that under special test conditions, an MRI-verified, callosally sectioned adult could name or write about information presented to the right hemisphere. Studies revealed this was not an instance of right hemisphere expression. Rather, the right hemisphere was somehow able to program the left hemisphere for a spoken or written response. Further, the studies also showed that the left hemisphere was not consciously aware that it possessed the information transmitted to it by the right half brain.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Components of visual attention. Alterations in response pattern to visual stimuli following parietal lobe infarction.

The contribution of attentional factors per se in response to visual stimuli was studied in patients with unilateral lesions of the left or right cerebral hemispheres. Subjects were required to respond to visual targets that were presented tachistoscopically, and were preceded by spatial cues that served to manipulate the spatial locus of attention. On 'valid' cue trials, the cue directed attention to the target's spatial coordinates; on 'invalid' cue trials, the cue misdirected attention. It was determined that damage to either the left or right hemisphere results in a general slowing of reaction times to visual stimuli irrespective of where such stimuli appear, and that patients with right parietal lesions are further impaired at shifting attention within the left visual field.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Further characterization of patients with amnesia after cardiac arrest: preserved recognition memory.

We observed that patients with amnesia after cardiac arrest had preserved recognition memory despite profound loss of recall memory. In the present study, rate of forgetting was measured in six amnesic subjects for both recall and recognition memory of verbal material. The data show that recall decayed significantly faster for the amnesic subjects than for controls, whereas the rate of forgetting for recognition memory was comparable in both groups. Dissociation between recall and recognition performance is a feature of the amnesic syndrome after cardiac arrest.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Enhanced dual task performance following corpus commissurotomy in humans.

A commissurotomy patient and two neurologically intact control observers were required to encode spatial patterns presented concurrently to the two hemifields. Under conditions of maximal perceptual load, in which different patterns appeared in the two fields, the commissurotomy patient encoded more information than the control observers. Based on these findings, it is concluded that competition for common internal processing mechanisms interferes with overall processing efficiency.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

A left hemisphere basis for visual mental imagery?

The lateralization of visual mental imagery was investigated by presenting each hemisphere of a commissurotomy patient with a letter classification task known to require imagery and with a pair of control tasks designed to require all of the same processes as the imagery task except for the imagery processing itself. Whereas both hemispheres performed well on the control tasks, only the left hemisphere performed the imagery task.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

A computational analysis of mental image generation: evidence from functional dissociations in split-brain patients.

Recent efforts to build computer simulation models of mental imagery have suggested that imagery is not a unitary phenomenon. Rather, such efforts have led to a modular analysis of the image-generation process, with separate modules that can activate visual memories, inspect parts of imaged patterns, and arrange separate parts into a composite image. This idea was supported by the finding of functional dissociations between the kinds of imagery tasks that could be performed in the left and right cerebral hemispheres of two patients who had previously undergone surgical transection of their corpus callosa. The left hemisphere in both subjects could inspect imaged patterns and could generate single and multipart images. In contrast, although the right hemisphere could inspect imaged patterns and could generate images of overall shape, it had difficulty in generating multipart images. The results suggest a deficit in the module that arranges parts into a composite. The observed pattern of deficits and abilities implied that this module is not used in language, visual perception, or drawing. Furthermore, the results suggest that the basis for this deficit is not a difficulty in simply remembering visual details or engaging in sequential processing.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

MRI assessment of human callosal surgery with neuropsychological correlates.

MRI imaging using recovery and spin-echo techniques was carried out on three patients after surgical section of the corpus callosum to control intractable epilepsy. The scans revealed that the total callosotomy had been obtained in two patients, while partial sparing of splenial and rostral fibers was seen in the third.

Corpus Callosum↗
PubMed1984

Interactions between cortical and subcortical visual areas: evidence from human commissurotomy patients.

Two commissurotomy patients performed an oculomotor task that required integrating visual information from the two hemifields. In marked contrast to previous "split-brain" findings, visual information from both hemifields was available for oculomotor control and perceptual function, provided that accurate performance depended on relatively crude visual discrimination. When finer spatial resolution was required, interfield performance declined to chance levels. The failure of a subject with occipital damage to accurately localize comparable stimuli in her blind field implies that cross-integration of the visual fields in commissurotomy patients requires interactions between cortical and subcortical visual areas.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

Dual task interactions due exclusively to limits in processing resources.

Information presented to each hemisphere of the commissurotomy patient is available only to the stimulated hemisphere. Despite this, the hemispheres have access to a common pool of processing resources, which, under conditions of demanding bilateral stimulation, is distributed between the hemispheres.

Brain↗
PubMed1982

Cortical mechanisms involved in praxis: observations following partial and complete section of the corpus callosum in man.

In patients who have undergone complete section of the corpus callosum for intractable epilepsy, lateralized presentation of visual nonverbal stimulation showed that the coordination of motor acts by either hand is controlled exclusively by the contralateral hemisphere. When two patients had serial operations consisting of an initial division of the splenium and posterior 3 cm, followed by complete callosal division, an opportunity arose to test the explicit cortical pathways involved in ipsilateral control. Between operations, these patients could not coordinate movements of the hand ipsilateral to the hemisphere receiving the command. This suggested that for visual nonverbal stimulation, the posterior 3 cm of corpus callosum is necessary for control of the ipsilateral hand; the rostral callosum cannot transfer sensorimotor commands. Also, contrary to current views, each hemisphere can carry out sequentially dependent motor activity.

Corpus Callosum↗
PubMed1981

Cognitive interaction after staged callosal section: evidence for transfer of semantic activation.

Sensory and cognitive functions were assessed in a right-handed male before and after partial and complete callosal commissurotomy. After the initial posterior section was made, there was no evidence of interhemispheric sensory transfer, although the left hemisphere did have access to stimulus-related semantic and episodic information from the right hemisphere. After the callosum was completely sectioned, this exchange was no longer observed.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Retinal image smear as a source of information about magnitude of eye movement.

A number of experiments were conducted to determine to what extent retinal image smearing during saccades provides information about the eye movement magnitude to the perceptual system. The technique involved obtaining measures of perceived movement when the total visual field was displaced in conjunction with saccadic eye movements. Trials with normal retinal smear were compared with trials on which smearing was greatly reduced or eliminated. The results are interpreted as showing that the absence of normal retinal smear during a saccade increases the uncertainty in the information available to the perceptual system and that this uncertainty results in a tendency to perceive smaller than veridical amounts of movement.

Adult↗