Zoom Brown Bag: Recovering information hidden behind the binocular scotoma in macular degeneration

Abstract - When macular degeneration affects the foveae bilaterally, it results in a binocular scotoma that compromises both high-acuity vision and eye movements. A preferred retinal locus (PRL) is eventually adopted for fixation and oculomotor reference, but individuals still struggle with daily-living tasks as they are often unaware of the location and extent of their scotoma. Current methods of detailed scotoma mapping are mainly monocular; very few methods offer the same level of precision for binocular scotoma. In this brown bag, I will present my work done at Smith-Kettlewell in the last two years as a postdoctoral fellow. First, I will present a new eyetracker-based method to map precisely the binocular scotoma. Second, I will present how we use this detailed map to investigate in a visual search task how saccades compensate for the scotoma, which obscures parts of the visual scene.