Interocular suppression and selective visual attention in amblyopia

Abstract

Attention allows us to select the most important information while ignoring irrelevant information. One prominent role of attention is that visual attention operates through the facilitation of neural responses at the attended location and suppression of neural responses at the unattended location. This opens the possibility that amblyopic suppression may be a form of “attentional neglect” of visual input from the amblyopic eye to overcome “double vision” or “visual blur” due to strabismus or anisometropia. We speculate that a long-term “attentional neglect” of the visual input to the amblyopic eye may weaken attentional modulation in visual cortex. To test this hypothesis, we first measured attentional allocation and modulatory effects of spatial attention in the early visual cortex of human strabismic amblyopia using fMRI-informed EEG source imaging. Then, we related these findings to the psychophysical evidence of interocular suppression and the depth of amblyopia. In the latter part of the presentation, I will discuss the preliminary results from our ongoing studies.