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Oscillatory motion but not pattern reversal elicits monocular motion VEP biases in infantile esotropia.

Patients with early disruptions of binocularity show cortical directional asymmetries in their steady state monocular VEP response to oscillatory motion. The VEP directional asymmetry is characterized by significant first harmonic components that show a 180 degrees difference in the response phase between the two eyes. By contrast, the normal response is dominated by even-order response harmonics, although some normal observers also have measurable responses at the first harmonic. Experiments and simulations were conducted to determine if the first harmonic in patients could reasonably be attributed to direction selective mechanisms. A secondary goal was to determine whether the first harmonic response of normals was also due to imbalances in direction selective mechanisms. Monocular steady state VEPs were elicited by oscillating 3 c/deg gratings presented at 6 and 10 Hz in normal observers and observers with infantile esotropia. Responses were also obtained to phase-reversing gratings of the same spatial and temporal frequencies. Phase reversal eliminated the majority of first harmonic responses which were recorded for normal observers to oscillatory motion. However, phase reversal did not elicit the cortical motion asymmetry in infantile esotropia. Modeling results suggest that the first harmonic response to oscillatory motion arises due to non-linearities in both direction selective and non-direction-selective mechanisms, with the latter being dominant in patients with early onset strabismus.

Adolescent↗

Assessment of cortical dysfunction in human strabismic amblyopia using magnetoencephalography (MEG).

The aim of this study was to use the technique of magnetoencephalography (MEG) to determine the effects of strabismic amblyopia on the processing of spatial information within the occipital cortex of humans. We recorded evoked magnetic responses to the onset of a chromatic (red/green) sinusoidal grating of periodicity 0.5-4.0 c deg-1 using a 19-channel SQUID-based neuromagnetometer. Evoked responses were recorded monocularly on six amblyopes and six normally-sighted controls, the stimuli being positioned near the fovea in the lower right visual field of each observer. For comparison, the spatial contrast sensitivity function (CSF) for the detection of chromatic gratings was measured for one amblyope and one control using a two alternate forced-choice psychophysical procedure. We chose red/green sinusoids as our stimuli because they evoke strong magnetic responses from the occipital cortex in adult humans (Fylan, Holliday, Singh, Anderson & Harding. (1997). Neuroimage, 6, 47-57). Magnetic field strength was plotted as a function of stimulus spatial frequency for each eye of each subject. Interocular differences were only evident within the amblyopic group: for stimuli of 1-2 c deg-1, the evoked responses had significantly longer latencies and reduced amplitudes through the amblyopic eye (P < 0.05). Importantly, the extent of the deficit was uncorrelated with either Snellen acuity or contrast sensitivity. Localization of the evoked responses was performed using a single equivalent current dipole model. Source localizations, for both normal and amblyopic subjects, were consistent with neural activity at the occipital pole near the V1/V2 border. We conclude that MEG is sensitive to the deficit in cortical processing associated with human amblyopia, and can be used to make quantitative neurophysiological measurements. The nature of the cortical deficit is discussed.

Adult↗

Maturation of the pattern-reversal VEP in human infants: a theoretical framework.

Visual evoked potentials to pattern reversal (PR-VEPs) are used to assess the integrity and maturation of the visual pathways in infants and young children. To establish normal ranges and to facilitate interpolation, we consider the maturation rate of PR-VEPs using published normative data. Curves based on the logistic function (a sigmoid model) are introduced and compared with three other models: (1) the power law function; (2) the sum of two decaying exponentials; and (3) a two-stage linear model. Although methods vary somewhat, remarkable consistency among laboratories is found for the maturation of the major positivity (P1) of PR-VEP. The P1 occurs at approximately 260 ms in neonates and is quite variable. It matures rapidly before 12-14 weeks of age and becomes much less variable. The logistic model provides a parsimonious description of P1 maturation with most rapid maturation at around 6 weeks of age for large patterns and around 9 weeks for small patterns. As inter-laboratory agreement is generally good, the normal ranges based on this model could be used in centres, which do not have their own normative databases for infant VEPs.

Aging↗

Binocularity and spatial frequency dependence of calcarine activation in two types of amblyopia.

OBJECTIVE AND BACKGROUND: Strabismus and anisometropia early in life frequently causes monocular amblyopia. Activation of the visual cortex is compared between the two types of amblyopia to elucidate differences in the pathogenetic mechanism of the disease. METHODS: Using an EPI gradient echo sequence in 1.5T MRI, calcarine activation by monocular viewing of checkerboard patterns with reversal was examined in terms of binocularity of the activation and dependence on the spatial frequency of the stimuli. RESULTS: First, the proportion of voxels activated by both normal and amblyopic eye monocular stimulations is lower in the strabismic group than in the anisometropic group. Second, the activation by higher-spatial-frequency stimuli is reduced in the anisometropic group, but not in the strabismic group. CONCLUSIONS: These findings from the human visual cortex are consistent with the view proposed based on animal research that the loss of binocular interaction and the undersampling of high-spatial-frequency components of visual stimuli are each one of the underlying changes in strabismic and anisometropic amblyopia, respectively.

Adolescent↗

Brain potentials reveal the timing of face identity and expression judgments.

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from multiple scalp locations from young human subjects while they performed two different face processing tasks. The first task entailed the presentation of pairs of faces in which the second face was either a different view of the first face or a different view of a different face. The subjects had to decide whether or not the two faces depicted the same person. In the second task, pairs of faces (frontal views) were presented with the task of judging whether the expression of the second face matched that of the face. Incongruous faces in the view (identity) matching task gave rise to a negativity peaking at about 350 ms with a frontocentral maximum. This effect was similar to the N400 obtained in linguistic tasks. ERP effects in the expression matching task were much later and had a different distribution. This pattern of results corresponds well with neuropsychological and neuroimaging data suggesting specialized neuronal populations subserving identity and expression analysis but adds a temporal dimension to previous investigations.

Adult↗

Age-related changes in brain responses to personally known faces: an event-related potential (ERP) study in humans.

Midlife period has not been investigated so far regarding associations between brain responses and spared abilities for face processing. This study examines the effects of midlife aging on behavioural performance and event-related potentials (ERPs) during the perception of personally known faces. Ten middle-aged adults (aged 45-60) and 12 young adults (aged 20-30) performed a visual discrimination task based on the detection of modified eye colours. We found that this task was performed as accurately by middle-aged as by young adults. However, midlife aging is associated with specific ERP latency delays and important changes in scalp ERP distribution. These results -interpreted according to a compensation hypothesis- provide enlightening indications showing that, compared to young adults, the changes in brain activities observed in middle-aged adults may contribute to their maintained behavioural performance.

Adult↗

Motion evoked brain potentials parallel the consistency of coherent motion perception in humans.

The perception of global coherent motion perception in complex motion patterns containing different direction vectors was investigated. Random dot kinematograms (RDK), plaids and fragmented plaid pattern were presented in which direction vectors of the moving elements were varied. In order to elicit coherent motion perception, all elements were displaced in the same direction (delta0 degrees). In a second condition, fifty percent of the elements were moved diagonally downwards to the left, with the remaining elements moving orthogonally (delta 90 degrees). Simultaneously with psychophysical judgements on the perceived motion direction, visual evoked potentials (VEPs) were recorded at occipital electrode positions. Onset of a global coherent motion was associated with a VEP negativity occurring at about 200 ms. The amplitude of this component was clearly reduced when local ambiguous signals could not be integrated to produce the perception of global coherent motion.

Adult↗

Temperature dependence and independence of effects of pentobarbital on visual evoked potentials of rats.

Visual cortex flash evoked potentials (FEPs), pattern reversal evoked potentials (PREPs), and body temperature were measured in hooded rats following IP injections on separate days of saline, and of 15 and 30 mg pentobarbital/kg body weight. Two experiments were performed, differentiated by standard (23 degrees C) and warm (31 degrees C) room temperatures. The 30 mg/kg dose produced hypothermia of 2.6 degrees C in the standard environment, but not in the warm environment. Early components of FEPs were generally increased in amplitude by the 15 mg/kg dose, and decreased by the 30 mg/kg dose at 23 degrees C. At 31 degrees C, the 30 mg/kg dose did not decrease early component amplitude, suggesting that hypothermia can potentiate some effects of pentobarbital. Amplitudes of late FEP components were depressed at both ambient temperatures. The main PREP components N1P1 and P1N3 were increased in amplitude by the 15 mg/kg dose, but returned to near baseline levels at 30 mg/kg, at both temperatures. PREP component N2P2 was reduced in amplitude by the 30 mg/kg dose only at 23 degrees C. Treatment with 30 mg/kg pentobarbital increased FEP and PREP latencies at both ambient temperatures, but the magnitudes of the increases at 31 degrees C were typically less than half those observed at 23 degrees C. These results indicate that hypothermia contributes to some pentobarbital-induced changes in both FEPs and PREPs, but that pentobarbital also produces effects independent of hypothermia.

Animals↗

Affective attitudes to face images associated with intracerebral EEG source location before face viewing.

We investigated whether different, personality-related affective attitudes are associated with different brain electric field (EEG) sources before any emotional challenge (stimulus exposure). A 27-channel EEG was recorded in 15 subjects during eyes-closed resting. After recording, subjects rated 32 images of human faces for affective appeal. The subjects in the first (i.e., most negative) and fourth (i.e., most positive) quartile of general affective attitude were further analyzed. The EEG data (mean=25+/-4. 8 s/subject) were subjected to frequency-domain model dipole source analysis (FFT-Dipole-Approximation), resulting in 3-dimensional intracerebral source locations and strengths for the delta-theta, alpha, and beta EEG frequency band, and for the full range (1.5-30 Hz) band. Subjects with negative attitude (compared to those with positive attitude) showed the following source locations: more inferior for all frequency bands, more anterior for the delta-theta band, more posterior and more right for the alpha, beta and 1.5-30 Hz bands. One year later, the subjects were asked to rate the face images again. The rating scores for the same face images were highly correlated for all subjects, and original and retest affective mean attitude was highly correlated across subjects. The present results show that subjects with different affective attitudes to face images had different active, cerebral, neural populations in a task-free condition prior to viewing the images. We conclude that the brain functional state which implements affective attitude towards face images as a personality feature exists without elicitors, as a continuously present, dynamic feature of brain functioning.

Adult↗

[Study of electroretinogram components using pattern inversion in the early diagnosis of glaucoma].

Current electrophysiological techniques that help guide the diagnosis of glaucoma include pattern-electroretinogram (PERG) and pattern-visual evoked potential (PEVP) recordings. However, PERG has been recognized over the last decade as a good indicator of retinal ganglion cell function. One hundred seventy one eyes corresponding to 89 subjects were studied using both PERG (gold foil electrodes) and PEVP recordings. Two groups respectively including 32 subjects with ocular hypertension (OHT) and 27 subjects with simple chronic glaucoma (SCG) were compared with a control group composed of 30 healthy age-matched subjects. In regard to PERG recordings, the amplitudes of the P50 and N95 components were measured, but statistically significant differences were shown only for the N95 amplitudes both SCG (P < 0.01) and OHT (P < 0.05) groups. The amplitude and latency of the PEVP P100 component were analyzed. P100 latency was significantly delayed (P < 0.05) in SCG patients only. These findings suggest that the amplitude of the N95 component is the most sensitive electrophysiological parameter for early glaucoma detection.

Adult↗

Differential effects of low-frequency rTMS at the occipital pole on visual-induced alpha desynchronization and visual-evoked potentials.

Visual-induced alpha desynchronization (VID) and visual-evoked potentials (VEPs) characterize occipital activation in response to visual stimulation but their exact relationship is unclear. Here, we tested the hypothesis that VID and VEPs reflect different aspects of cortical activation. For this purpose, we determined whether VID and VEPs are differentially modulated by low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the occipital pole. Scalp EEG responses to visual stimuli (flashed either to the left or to the right visual field) were recorded for 8 min in six healthy subjects (1) before, (2) immediately following, and (3) 20 min after left occipital rTMS (1 Hz, 10 min). The parameters aimed to reduce cortical excitability beyond the end of the TMS train. In addition, simple reaction times to visual stimulation were recorded (left or right hand in separate blocks). In all subjects, VID was significantly and prominently reduced by rTMS (P = 0.0001). In contrast, rTMS failed to modulate early VEP components (P1/N1). A moderate effect was found on a late VEP component close to manual response onset (P = 0.014) but this effect was in the opposite direction to the VID change. All changes were restricted to the targeted left occipital cortex. The effects were present only after right visual field stimulation when a right hand response was required, were associated with a behavioral effect, and had washed out 20 min after rTMS. We conclude that VID and early VEPs represent different aspects of cortical activation. The findings that rTMS did not change early VEPs and selectively affected VID and late VEPs in conditions where the visual input must be transferred intrahemispherically for visuomotor integration (right visual field/right hand) are suggestive of rTMS interference with higher-order visual functions beyond visual input. This is consistent with the idea that alpha desynchronization serves an integrative role through a corticocortical "gating function."

Adult↗

The effects of collinearity and orientation on texture visual evoked potentials.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the research was to study the effects of stimulus orientation at both the local (textons) and the global (segregated elements) level on texture visual evoked potentials (tVEPs). METHODS: Two tVEP paradigms were presented to 10 volunteers. The paradigms were characterized by alternating uniform textures (random mixture of square dots and lines) and textures in which stripes of randomly disposed lines segregated from a square dots' background. In one paradigm, the stripes were horizontal and in the other, vertical. The lines could be either horizontal or vertical in single stimuli of both paradigms. Thus, two stimuli with local/global collinearity and two stimuli without local/global collinearity were available. tVEPs were derived from Oz referenced to the left earlobe and averaged separately for each condition. Segregation-related components were obtained subtracting the traces without segregation from the traces with segregation. RESULTS: A negative segregation component starting at the latency of P1 and extending until the end of N2 characterized the tVEPs, without significant differences among the 4 stimulus conditions. In the presence of local/global collinearity, we found an early modulation of N1 amplitude. This modulation was orientation-dependent, as vertical collinearity increased N1 negativity and horizontal collinearity reduced N1 negativity. CONCLUSIONS: Our experiment confirms previous findings about the segregation negativity, which may depend on contextual modulation of V1 neurons by long-range horizontal and feed-back connections. The early effect of collinearity may depend on more local modulatory connections.

Adult↗

Rapid detection of threshold VEPs.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a one-dimensional (1D) Laplacian analysis detects steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs) faster than the standard O(z)-F(z) montage and to establish the optimum position of Laplacian reference electrodes. METHODS: Twenty-two normal adults were shown reversing checks ranging from 1.5' to 60'. Three electrode montages were investigated: O(z)-F(z), LO-F(z) and a 1D Laplacian analysis of 3 occipital electrodes (2O(z)-(RO+LO)). RO and LO were placed symmetrically and horizontally about O(z). Five different locations for RO and LO were investigated. Recordings were analysed in the frequency domain and the presence (and detection time, DT) or absence of a ssVEP defined statistically. Effects of individual, reference electrode site and check size on DT and phase differences between recording montages were investigated. RESULTS: Laplacian analysis detected ssVEPs to small (3') checks faster than O(z)-F(z), by 12.3 and 4.1s on average with Laplacian reference electrodes at 15 and 20% of half-head circumference, respectively. The optimum position of reference electrodes was governed by the instantaneous spatial spread of the response and the noise coherence between midline and lateral electrodes. CONCLUSIONS: A 1D Laplacian analysis can reduce the time to statistical detection of ssVEPs compared to the traditional O(z)-F(z) recording for stimuli near the normal acuity threshold of adults. This in turn could be used to minimise the length of a VEP acuity assessment.

Adult↗

Pattern-reversal visual evoked potentials in infants: gender differences during early visual maturation.

This paper investigates gender differences in the peak latency and amplitude of the P1 component of the pattern-reversal visual evoked potential (pattern-reversal VEP) recorded in healthy term infants. Pattern-reversal VEPs in response to a series of high contrast black and white checks (check widths 120', 60', 30', 24', 12', 6') were recorded in 50 infants (20 males, 30 females) at 50 weeks post-conceptional age (PCA) and in 49 infants (22 males, 27 females) at 66 weeks PCA. Peak latency of the major component, P1, was considerably shorter in female compared with male infants. Differences in head circumference do not entirely account for the gender differences in peak latency reported here. A gender difference in P1 amplitude was not detected. These findings stress the importance of considering gender norms as well as age-matched norms when utilizing the pattern-reversal VEP in clinical investigations. Studies including a wider range of ages are clearly necessary in order to establish whether the earlier peak latencies in female infants represents a difference in the onset or rate of visual maturation.

Age Factors↗

Optimal check size and reversal rate to elicit pattern-reversal MEG responses.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the impact of check size and interstimulus interval (ISI) on neuromagnetic visual cortical responses. METHODS: We recorded visual evoked fields to pattern-reversal stimulation with central occlusion in ten subjects. The -100 ms magnetic activation (P100m) was analyzed by single dipole modeling. RESULTS: With 1 s ISI, P100m strengths increased as check size increased from 15' up to 120' of visual arc, and larger checks elicited less P100m activation. With 120' checks, we found no P100m attenuation as ISI decreased from 4 s to 0.16 s. P100m sources around the calcarine sulcus did not vary with check size or ISI. CONCLUSIONS: The magnitude of cortical activation during visual contrast processing is check size-dependent and the 120' checks are optimum for future studies on neuromagnetic visual cortical functions using central-occluded stimulation. The corresponding neuronal activation demonstrated a short refractory period less than 0.16 s. We also found significantly overlapping cortical representation areas for different check sizes or ISIs.

Adult↗

Temporal dynamics of 2D and 3D shape representation in macaque visual area V4.

We studied the temporal dynamics of shape representation in area V4 of the alert macaque monkey. Analyses were based on two large stimulus sets, one equivalent to the 2D shape stimuli used in a previous study of V2, and the other a set of stereoscopic 3D shape stimuli. As in V2, we found that information conveyed by individual V4 neurons about the stimuli tended to be maximal during the initial transient response and generally lower, albeit statistically significant, afterwards. The population response was substantially correlated from one stimulus to the next during the transients, and decorrelated as responses decayed. V4 responses showed significantly longer latencies than in V2, especially for the 3D stimulus set. Recordings from area V1 in a single animal revealed temporal dynamic patterns in response to the 2D shape stimuli that were largely similar to those in V2 and V4. Together with earlier results, these findings provide evidence for a distributed process of coarse-to-fine representation of shape stimuli in the visual cortex.

Action Potentials↗

Electrophysiological evidence for a shared representational medium for visual images and visual percepts.

Does mental imagery involve the activation of representations in the visual system? Systematic effects of imagery on visual signal detection performance have been used to argue that imagery and the perceptual processing of stimuli interact at some common locus of activity (Farah, 1985). However, such a result is neutral with respect to the question of whether the interaction occurs during modality-specific visual processing of the stimulus. If imagery affects stimulus processing at early, modality-specific stages of stimulus representation, this implies that the shared stimulus representations are visual, whereas if imagery affects stimulus processing only at later, amodal stages of stimulus representation, this implies that imagery involves more abstract, postvisual stimulus representations. To distinguish between these two possibilities, we repeated the earlier imagery-perception interaction experiment while recording event-related potentials (ERPs) to stimuli from 16 scalp electrodes. By observing the time course and scalp distribution of the effect of imagery on the ERP to stimuli, we can put constraints on the locus of the shared representations for imagery and perception. An effect of imagery was seen within 200 ms following stimulus presentation, at the latency of the first negative component of the visual ERP, localized at the occipital and posterior temporal regions of the scalp, that is, directly over visual cortex. This finding provides support for the claim that mental images interact with percepts in the visual system proper and hence that mental images are themselves visual representations.

Adult↗

Optimizing the use of information: strategic control of activation of responses.

Recent studies indicate that subjects may respond to visual information during either an early parallel phase or a later focused phase and that the selection of the relevant phase is data driven. Using the noise-compatibility paradigm, we tested the hypothesis that this selection may also be strategic and context driven. At least part of the interference effect observed in this paradigm is due to response activation during the parallel-processing phase. We manipulated subjects' expectancies for compatible and incompatible noise in 4 experiments and effectively modulated the interference effect. The results suggest that expectancies about the relative utility of the information extracted during the parallel and focused phases determine which phase is used to activate responses.

Adult↗