title: Area-specific amblyopic effects in human occipitotemporal object representations.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lerner
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pianka
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Azmon
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Leiba
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Stolovitch
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Loewenstein
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Harel
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hendler
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Malach
mesh_terms: 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*