Visual responses of neurons from areas V1 and MT in a monkey with late onset strabismus: a case study

The role of eye movement driven attention in functional strabismic amblyopia

Strabismic amblyopia “blunt vision” is a developmental anomaly that affects binocular vision and results in lowered visual acuity. Strabismus is a term for a misalignment of the visual axes and is usually characterized by impaired ability of the strabismic eye to take up fixation. Such impaired fixation is usually a function of the temporally and spatially impaired binocular eye movements that normally underlie binocular shifts in visual attention. In this review, we discuss how abnormal eye movement function in children with misaligned eyes influences the development of normal binocular visual attention and results in deficits in visual function such as depth perception. We also discuss how eye movement function deficits in adult amblyopia patients can also lead to other abnormalities in visual perception. Finally, we examine how the nonamblyopic eye of an amblyope is also affected in strabismic amblyopia.

Retinotopic maps and foveal suppression in the visual cortex of amblyopic adults

Amblyopia is a developmental visual disorder associated with loss of monocular acuity and sensitivity as well as profound alterations in binocular integration. Abnormal connections in visual cortex are known to underlie this loss, but the extent to which these abnormalities are regionally or retinotopically specific has not been fully determined. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study compared the retinotopic maps in visual cortex produced by each individual eye in 19 adults (7 esotropic strabismics, 6 anisometropes and 6 controls). In our standard viewing condition, the non-tested eye viewed a dichoptic homogeneous mid-level grey stimulus, thereby permitting some degree of binocular interaction. Regions-of-interest analysis was performed for extrafoveal V1, extrafoveal V2 and the foveal representation at the occipital pole. In general, the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal was reduced for the amblyopic eye. At the occipital pole, population receptive fields were shifted to represent more parafoveal locations for the amblyopic eye, compared with the fellow eye, in some subjects. Interestingly, occluding the fellow eye caused an expanded foveal representation for the amblyopic eye in one early-onset strabismic subject with binocular suppression, indicating real-time cortical remapping. In addition, a few subjects actually showed increased activity in parietal and temporal cortex when viewing with the amblyopic eye. We conclude that, even in a heterogeneous population, abnormal early visual experience commonly leads to regionally specific cortical adaptations.

Decreased cortical activation in response to a motion stimulus in anisometropic amblyopic eyes using functional magnetic resonance imaging

PURPOSE

Motion perception abnormalities and extrastriate abnormalities have been suggested in amblyopia. Functional MRI (fMRI) and motion stimuli were used to study whether interocular differences in activation are detectable in motion-sensitive cortical areas in patients with anisometropic amblyopia.

METHODS

We performed fMRI at 1.5 T 4 control subjects (20/20 OU), 1 with monocular suppression (20/25), and 2 with anisometropic amblyopia (20/60, 20/800). Monocular suppression was thought to be form fruste of amblyopia. The experimental stimulus consisted of expanding and contracting concentric rings, whereas the control condition consisted of stationary concentric rings. Activation was determined by contrasting the 2 conditions for each eye.

RESULTS

Significant fMRI activation and comparable right and left eye activation was found in V3a and V5 in all control subjects (Average z-values in L vs R contrast 0.42, 0.43) and in the subject with monocular suppression (z = 0.19). The anisometropes exhibited decreased extrastriate activation in their amblyopic eyes compared with the fellow eyes (zs = 2.12, 2.76).

CONCLUSIONS

Our data suggest motion-sensitive cortical structures may be less active when anisometropic amblyopic eyes are stimulated with moving rings. These results support the hypothesis that extrastriate cortex is affected in anisometropic amblyopia. Although suggestive of a magnocellular defect, the exact mechanism is unclear.

Cerebral correlates of impaired grating perception in individual, psychophysically assessed human amblyopes

We investigated neuronal correlates of amblyopic deficits resulting from early onset strabismus or anisometropia by monitoring individual responses in retinotopically mapped cortical visual areas with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in eight psychophysically assessed adult amblyopes. In lower visual areas (V1/V2), grating stimuli presented to the normal and the amblyopic eye evoked strong cortical responses, while responses to the amblyopic eye were progressively reduced in higher areas on the central visual pathway (V3a/VP; V4/V8; lateral occipital complex, LOC). Selective reduction for high spatial frequency gratings was especially obvious in LOC. This suggests that transmission of activity from the amblyopic eye is increasingly impaired while it is relayed towards higher processing levels. Elevated responses in parts of areas V1 and V2 to monocular stimulation of the amblyopic eye might be related to the spatial and temporal distortions experienced by some amblyopic subjects.

Relationship between extraretinal component of firing rate and eye speed in area MST of macaque monkeys

We have isolated extraretinal and retinal components of firing during smooth pursuit eye movements in the medial-superior-temporal area (MST) in the extrastriate visual cortex. Awake macaque monkeys tracked spots in total darkness to eliminate image motion inputs from the background. For 300 ms during sustained tracking at different speeds, the target was stabilized on the moving eye, practically eliminating image motion inputs from the tracking target. The extraretinal component of firing rate during image stabilization was direction selective and related to eye speed but sometimes showed a different preferred speed from the retinal component of the same neuron's responses. The highly variable firing rate of individual MST neurons allowed an ideal observer to predict target speed correctly on 25% of trials. Pooling the data from 71 MST neurons improved the correct response rate to 50%. Behavioral experiments imposed brief perturbations of target velocity to assess the gain of visual-motor transmission for pursuit. The average response to perturbations increased as a function of target speed. However, the size of the responses to individual perturbations allowed an ideal observer to predict target speed correctly on only 35% of the trials. The imprecision of MST responses argues that the output of MST may be a poor candidate to drive eye velocity and so may instead regulate another component of pursuit. The good agreement between the eye velocity precision of the behavioral responses to perturbations of target motion and the firing of MST neurons raises regulation of the visual-motor gain of pursuit as one candidate component.

Short-latency disparity-vergence eye movements in humans: sensitivity to simulated orthogonal tropias

Small disparity stimuli applied to large random-dot patterns elicit machine-like vergence eye movements at short latency. We have examined the sensitivity of these eye movements to simulated orthogonal tropias in three normal subjects by recording (1) the effects of vertical disparities on the initial horizontal vergence responses elicited by 2 degrees crossed and uncrossed (horizontal) disparity stimuli, and (2) the effects of horizontal disparities on the initial vertical vergence responses elicited by 1.2 degrees left-hyper and 0.8 degrees right-hyper (vertical) disparity stimuli. Initial vergence responses were strongest when the orthogonal disparity was close to zero, and decreased to zero as the orthogonal disparity increased to 3 degrees -5 degrees, i.e., there was only a limited tolerance for orthogonal disparity. Tuning curves describing the dependence of the initial change in the vergence angle on the orthogonal disparity were well fit by a Gaussian function. An additional subject, who had an esotropia of approximately 10 degrees in our experimental setup, showed almost no horizontal vergence responses but did show vertical vergence responses to vertical disparity stimuli at short latency (albeit slightly longer than normal) despite the fact that her esotropia resulted in uncrossed disparities that would have totally disabled the vertical vergence mechanism of a normal subject, cf., anomalous retinal correspondence.

Cortical projections to the nucleus of the optic tract and dorsal terminal nucleus and to the dorsolateral pontine nucleus in macaques: a dual retrograde tracing study

The nucleus of the optic tract and dorsal terminal nucleus of the accessory optic system (NOT-DTN) along with the dorsolateral pontine nucleus (DLPN) have been shown to play a role in controlling slow eye movements and in maintaining stable vision during head movements. Both nuclei are known to receive cortical input from striate and extrastriate cortex. To determine to what degree this cortical input arises from the same areas and potentially from the same individual neurons, we placed different retrograde tracers into the NOT-DTN and the DLPN. In the ipsilateral cortical hemisphere the two projections mainly overlapped in the posterior part of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) comprising the middle temporal area (MT), the middle superior temporal area (MST), and the visual area in the fundus of the STS (FST) and the surrounding cortex. In these areas, neurons projecting to the NOT-DTN or the DLPN were closely intermingled. Nevertheless, only 3-11% of the labeled neurons in MT and MST were double-labeled in our various cases. These results indicate that the cortical input to the NOT-DTN and DLPN arises from largely separate neuronal subpopulations in the motion sensitive areas in the posterior STS. Only a small percentage of the projection neurons bifurcate to supply both targets. These findings are discussed in relation to the optokinetic and the smooth pursuit system.

Metabolic mapping of suppression scotomas in striate cortex of macaques with experimental strabismus

Misalignment of the ocular axes induces double vision and rivalry. To prevent these unpleasant sensations, most subjects fixate preferentially with one eye and suppress entirely the deviating eye or else suppress portions of the visual field of either eye. To explore the mechanism of visual suppression, a divergent strabismus (exotropia) was induced in six normal, adult Macaca fascicularis by disinserting the medial rectus muscles. After 4-8 weeks, each animal was chaired to measure its exotropia and to determine its ocular fixation preference. Five of the monkeys developed a clearly dominant eye. It was injected with [(3)H]proline. Alternate sections from flat-mounts of striate cortex were then processed either for autoradiography to label the ocular dominance columns or for cytochrome oxidase (CO) to assess local metabolic activity. Two CO patterns were seen, often in the same cortex. The first consisted of thin dark columns alternating with wide pale columns. This pattern arose from reduced CO activity in the suppressed eye's monocular core zones and both eyes' binocular border strips. The second pattern consisted of thin pale bands from reduced metabolic activity in both eyes' border strips. The thin dark-wide pale CO pattern was more widespread in the three animals with a strong fixation preference. The dark CO columns usually fit in register with the ocular dominance columns of the fixating eye, suggesting that perception was suppressed in the deviating eye. In most animals, however, the correlation switched in peripheral cortex contralateral to the deviating eye, implying local suppression of the fixating eye's temporal retina (beyond 10 degrees), as reported in humans with divergent strabismus. In the two animals with a weak fixation preference, pale border strips were found within the central visual field representation in both hemispheres. This CO pattern was consistent with alternating visual suppression. These experiments provide the first anatomical evidence for changes in cortical metabolism that can be correlated with suppression scotomas in subjects with strabismus.