Area-specific amblyopic effects in human occipitotemporal object representations.
The role of early visual experience in the establishment of human high-order visual areas is poorly understood. Here we investigated this issue using human amblyopia--a developmental visual disorder, which manifests a central vision (acuity) deficit. Previous fMRI studies of amblyopes have described abnormal functional activations in early retinotopic areas. Here we report the surprising finding of a selective object-related abnormality in high-order occipitotemporal cortex. Specifically, we found that face-related cortical areas show a severe disconnection from the amblyopic eye, while building-related regions remain essentially normal. The selectivity of the deficit highlights the differential computations performed in the different object-related areas and is compatible with the suggested association of face regions with analysis of fine detail.
Lerner
Y
Y
Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel.
Pianka
P
P
Azmon
B
B
Leiba
H
H
Stolovitch
C
C
Loewenstein
A
A
Harel
M
M
Hendler
T
T
Malach
R
R
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000550:Amblyopia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*