Sensory Deprivation

A peculiar occasional observation prompted our attention some years ago on the relationship between age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and amblyopia. A 75-year old gentleman, family friend of one of us (ECC) for decades, developed an hemorragic type of AMD in his sound eye. The other eye had a severe strabismic amblyopia, with excentric fixation and a visual acuity not better than 6/30. Initial fluorangiographic retinal changes were present in this eye as well. Over an eight year period no functional deterioration took place in the amblyopic eye, with only light perception present in the sound eye. Based on this clinical observation, we undertook a prospective study for evaluating the time course of a possible symmetrization of AMD in patients with strabismic amblyopia in which AMD started in the non-amblyopic eye. Ten patients initially presenting with clinically relevant AMD in one eye have been followed over a six year period. Five had esotropia with deep amblyopia of the deviated eye and five had normal binocular vision. The amblyopic patients were selected on the basis of the presence of an AMD in the sound eye. Visual acuity measurements and retinal fluorescein angiography (RFA) were repeated annually, in order to detect the time course of involvement of the second eye. Visual acuity of the eye with AMD in the patients with strabismic amblyopia of the other eye deteriorated rapidly to levels lower than that of the amblyopic eye (between 2 and 8 months from the initial observation). In the amblyopic eye, there was no change in the visual acuity over the six year period. In the strabismic patients the macular lesions of the eyes with AMD deteriorated from an hemorragic to a cicatricial stage in all five patients after 2 to 12 months. The RFA of the amblyopic eye showed initial changes, i.e., 'typical' or 'exudat-ive' drusen, after 6 to 48 months from the beginning of the study. Visual acuity testing in both eyes of the five patients without strabismus showed a progressive although slow deterioration in both the originally affected eye and the second eye. An initial deterioration of visual acuity in the second eye could be observed after 12 to 38 months from the beginning of the study. Visual acuity in the two eyes tended to be equal at the end of the observation period of six years. The earliest signs of the disease in the originally non-affected eye were revealed by RFA after 8 to 24 months from the beginning of the study.

Infants were presented with two sounding objects of different sizes in light and dark, in which sound cued the object's identity. Reaching behavior was assessed to determine if object size influenced preparation for grasping the object. In both light and dark, infants aligned their hands when contacting the large object compared with the small object, which resulted in a reach with both hands extended for the large object and reach with one hand more extended for the small object. Infants contacted the large object more frequently on the bottom and sides rather than the top, where the sound source was located. Reaching in the dark by 6~-month-olds is not merely directed toward a sound source but rather shows preparation in relation to the object's size. These findings were interpreted as evidence that mental representation of previously seen objects can guide subsequent motor action by 6~-month-old infants.

Auditory speech perception, speech production and reading lateralize to the left hemisphere in the majority of healthy right-handers. In this study, we investigated to what extent sensory input underlies the side of language dominance. We measured the lateralization of the three core subprocesses of language in patients who had profound hearing loss in the right ear from birth and in matched control subjects. They took part in a semantic decision listening task involving speech and sound stimuli (auditory perception), a word generation task (speech production) and a passive reading task (reading). The results show that a lack of sensory auditory input on the right side, which is strongly connected to the contralateral left hemisphere, does not lead to atypical lateralization of speech perception. Speech production and reading were also typically left lateralized in all but one patient, contradicting previous small scale studies. Other factors such as genetic constraints presumably overrule the role of sensory input in the development of (a)typical language lateralization.

OBJECTIVE. We investigated the effect of constraint-induced therapy (CIT) plus eye patching (EP), CIT alone, and conventional treatment on functional performance, eye movement, and trunk-arm kinematics in stroke patients with neglect syndrome.

The ear canal sound pressure and the malleus umbo velocity with bone conduction (BC) stimulation were measured in nine ears from five cadaver heads in the frequency range 0.1 to 10 kHz. The measurements were conducted with both open and occluded ear canals, before and after resection of the lower jaw, in a canal with the cartilage and soft tissues

Objectives: 1) To determine if a period of early auditory deprivation influences neural activity patterns as revealed by human auditory brain stem potentials evoked by electrical stimulation from a cochlear implant. 2) To examine the potential for plasticity in the human auditory brain stem. Specifically, we asked if electrically evoked auditory potentials from the auditory nerve and brain stem in children show evidence of development as a result of implant use. 3) To assess whether a sensitive or critical period exists in auditory brain stem development. Specifically, is there an age of implantation after which there are no longer developmental changes in auditory brain stem activity as revealed by electrically evoked potentials?

It is well established that refractive development is regulated by visual feedback. However, most optical treatment strategies designed to reduce myopia progression have not produced the desired results, primarily because some of our assumptions concerning the operating characteristics of the vision-dependent mechanisms that regulate refractive development have been incorrect. In particular, because of the prominence of central vision in primates, it has generally been assumed that signals from the fovea determine the effects of vision on refractive development. However, experiments in laboratory animals demonstrate that ocular growth and emmetropization are mediated by local retinal mechanisms and that foveal vision is not essential for many vision-dependent aspects of refractive development. However, the peripheral retina, in isolation, can effectively regulate emmetropization and mediate many of the effects of vision on the eye's refractive status. Moreover, when there are conflicting visual signals between the fovea and the periphery, peripheral vision can dominate refractive development. The overall pattern of results suggests that optical treatment strategies for myopia that take into account the effects of peripheral vision are likely to be more successful than strategies that effectively manipulate only central vision.

Higher order optical aberrations were measured in 273 cyclopleged Singaporean school children using a Bausch and Lomb Zywave aberrometer, with 268 of these subjects also undergoing corneal topography measurements (Tomey TMS 2 system). Subjects with low myopia (> À3.00 to À0.50 D) showed slightly, but significantly, less positive levels of spherical aberration than other refractive error groups. Chinese subjects also showed significantly higher amounts of aberrations than Malay subjects, particularly for vertical coma, but also for horizontal coma and spherical aberration. Anterior corneal spherical aberration (calculated from topography) was significantly correlated with whole eye spherical aberration, but did not vary significantly with refractive error or racial background. Residual spherical aberration (i.e. of posterior cornea and crystalline lens) did vary significantly with refractive error and race. Our results do not provide any evidence for aberration-driven form-deprivation as a major mechanism of myopia development.

The discovery of prehistoric cave paintings in the nineteenth century led to the shocking realisation that humans have been creating art for over 30,000 years. Episode two reveals how the very first pictures were created, and how images may have triggered the greatest change in human history.

To discover the first two dimensional paintings we need to look at the art created in caves such as Altamira, Chauvet and Lascaux; these were created roughly 35,000 years, the time Archeologists identify with a ‘creative explosion’.

The first of these cave paintings were discovered in Altemira by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, and his 8yr old daughter Maria, in 1879. The paintings they discovered on the walls of the caves were of animals such as aurochs, a long extinct relative of the bison. As these matched similar stone-age images he had seen, Sautuola concluded they were prehistoric. When the caves were opened to the public, however, they were considered a hoax, and unfortunately despite trying to clear his name, his discovery was not scientifically accepted until long after his death. Following this the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet came to light, and it is said that when Picasso saw images of the caves he declared “we have learned nothing”.

Today artists create images of every aspect of life, but back then the images were almost exclusively of animals,  in particular horses, bison and reindeer. The expert Henri Breuil believed the paintings to be linked to rituals that increased the chances of a successful hunt, however more recent archeology has shown that the animals depicted were not those eaten by the people of the time. In addition some of the paintings were in very hard to reach areas of the caves and featured dots and lines. However, it is easy to take a modern view such as this and miss the point completely, that being how did we learn to project our 3D world into 2D.

There are very similar paintings to be found in the Drakensburg Mountains of South Africa, however unlike their European cousins, these were not produced thousands of years ago, but much more recently. These images were produced by the San “bush men” and although they do not produce paintings like this today, Professor David Lewis Williams discovered papers from the late nineteenth century by a German settler that documented the life and rituals of the San people. It became clear to Williams that their religion was based around traveling in a trance state to a spirit world and that they documented in these pictures their experiences of the trance. Often these transitory states involved animals, and the animals depicted were normally large or powerful, such as the Eland, that were respected by the San people. Williams also noticed another similarity with their European counterparts, that of the dots and lines.

Research into altered states, such as the trances of the San people, show that on entering these states, visual disturbances similar to migraine aura that involved lines and dots occur. Furthermore, these images can also be produced through sensory deprivation, for example from being placed deep in a cave for a long time. Prehistoric people, it appears, had hallucinations , which took the form of things that were close to them, such as the horses, bison and aurochs. These hallucinations were remembered and prehistoric people then recreated them on the walls of their caves.

Returning to the European palaeolithic caves, it seems that 12,000 years ago people stopped painting. We don’t know why, but the discovery of Göbekli Tepe, in Southern Turkey may hold the answer.  When excavated the site revealed monolithic pillars built around 12,000 years ago, dated to just the time that the paintings in caves seem to stop. These stone pillars feature carvings of animals such as those in the caves. The effort in creating these stone pillars would have required considerable  labour and organisation, the workers for example, all needed feeding. Recent research has shown that modern wheat can be traced to wild wheat that grows within 20 miles of this site, which has lead scholars to speculate that this was the birthplace of agricultural farming and, in turn, complex society,'civilisation', itself.

For human and non-human primates, vision is one of the most privileged sensory channels used to interact with the environment. The importance of vision is strongly embedded in the organization of the primate brain as about one third of its cortical surface is involved in visual functions. It is therefore not surprising that the absence of vision from birth, or the loss of vision later in life, has huge consequences, both anatomically and functionally. Studies in animals and humans, conducted over the past few decades, have demonstrated that the absence of vision causes massive structural changes that take place not only in the visually deprived cortex but also in other brain areas. These studies have further shown that the visually deprived cortex becomes responsive to a wide variety of non-visual sensory inputs. Recent studies even showed a role of the visually deprived cortex in cognitive processes. At the behavioral level, increases in acuity for auditory and tactile processes ha...

Objective: To develop a questionnaire to assess the acceptability of amblyopia treatment and its effect on the child and family. Methods: A 20-item parental survey was developed and pilot tested on 64 subjects, aged 3 to 6 years, participating in the Amblyopia Treatment Study, a randomized trial comparing patching and atropine as treatments for moderate amblyopia. The survey was administered after 4 weeks of treatment. A descriptive item analysis and an internal consistency reliability analysis were performed. Results: Nineteen of the 20 items demonstrated adequate variability as evidenced by the frequency distributions for item responses. Only 4 (<1%) of 1280 possible item responses were missing, one each by 4 different respondents. Factor analysis identified 3 treatment-related factors-"adverse effects," "compliance," and "social stigma"-among 11 of the 20 items. The internal-consistency reliability α for the 5-item adverse effects subscale was 0.82, the 4-item compliance subscale α was 0.81, and the 2-item social stigma subscale α was 0.84. Conclusions: The Amblyopia Treatment Index appears to be a useful instrument for assessing the impact of amblyopia treatment in 3-to 6-year-old children. (J AAPOS 2001;5:250-4)

Grant Morrison is one of the world’s most acclaimed comic writers, known for both metafictional stylistic experiments and his very public penchant for a comparably postmodernist form of occult bricolage commonly called chaos magic. Morrison’s practical and theoretical interests in gnosticism, tantra, etc. inform his output in overt ways and exemplify an influential contemporary approach to yogic traditions in commercial comics. This chapter explores the treatment of Tibetan Dzogchen practice in Morrison’s late 2000s work on Batman, where he applies esoteric Buddhist meditation techniques to the perennial superhero theme of secret, split identities. As Marc Singer (2012) has observed, Morrison tackled similar motifs a decade earlier in The Invisibles, but where that opus generally celebrated the disruptive potential of the titular anarchist collective’s fragmented selves, here Batman’s fractured psyche forms the story’s central conflict. Transformational ego-transcendence through a solitary ‘dark retreat’ ritual akin to sensory deprivation becomes his means for survival, but even as the details of the rites draw on Buddhist traditions, the way Morrison depicts the experience and deploys the theme of isolation throughout can be read as emblematic of an individualized initiatory ordeal rooted more in the ceremonial magic of Aleister Crowley than in Tibetan Vajrayana.

What is silence? It is more difficult that it might seem to give an exhaustive definition of it in one sentence. Sara Maitland’s “A Book of Silence” is an abundant source of reflection on various kinds of silence. It emerges from the author’s own experiences and from those of other writers on whom she draws. Maitland’s book, along with some of her literary and scientific sources which she refers to, constitutes the basis for the considerations contained in this article, the aim of which is to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that silence is a relative phenomenon and that physical silence, understood as a lack of or muting of audible sounds, can be perceived by an individual either positively or negatively, depending on the circumstances in which the silence is experienced. Additionally, the way in which it is perceived can seriously affect a person’s health and well-being and, in extreme cases, it may even decide someone’s life.

Vision plays a central role in how we represent and interact with the world around us. Roughly, one-third of the cortical surface in primates is involved in visual processes. The loss of vision, either at birth or later in life, must therefore have profound consequences on brain organization and on the way the world is perceived and acted upon. In this chapter, we formulate a number of critical questions. Do blind individuals indeed develop supra-normal capacities for the remaining senses in order to compensate for their loss of vision? Do brains from sighted and blind individuals differ, and how? How does the brain of someone who has never had any visual perception form an image of the external world? We discuss findings from animal research as well from recent psychophysical and functional brain imaging studies in sighted and blind individuals that shed some new light on the answers to these questions.

A great number of Greek oracular cults focused on caves, notwithstanding the divergent nature of the divine patrons of these cults. The fundamental reason for locating prophetic activities in caves was the need of the gods' mediums to attain divine inspiration, that is, to alter their state of consciousness. For the purposes of divination the Greeks used at least two methods. The easiest and universally practiced technique was sensory deprivation. Modern research demonstrates that reduction of external stimuli leads to dream-like states, involving release of internal imagery. In the geographic setting of Greece, caverns and grottos provide an easy way to achieve total or near total isolation. The second technique was based on special geological conditions, namely, a source of poisonous gas having euphoriant or psychotropic effect. The psychotropic or, in the opinion of the Greeks, numinous quality of the caves was common knowledge to such a degree that the association of seers and prophets with caves became universal.

Over the last thirty years, a sensory turn is observed that has affected Classics and its cognate disciplines. This online conference, hosted by the University of Erfurt, will provide an intellectual platform for a new in-depth approach on the application of the sensory methodology into the emotional experiences of the mystery cults. While mystery cults have been studied by diverse methodological frameworks, there has not been a dedicated conference, workshop, or volume on the application of sensory studies into the effect of the sensory experience of initiatory rituals (e.g., procession, singing of hymns, ecstatic dances, water-cleansing, sacrificial rituals) in eliciting various emotions in the ancient worshippers who participated in specific mystery cults. The term “Multi-Sensory Experience” serves as a guiding principle and thread that invites the modern researcher to consider and reflect on the multiple senses through which the ancient worshipper could experience a mystery cult. For the ancient Greek and Roman worshippers, just as it is for us, religion was a multi-sensory experience. This conference, therefore, aims to delve into certain aspects of the ancient mystery cults and investigate the emotional impact of these rituals through the new sensory methodology: how the basic somatic senses (e.g., sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch) of the ancient people affected their emotions as a result of their participation in the ancient mysteries? To receive the link to participate, please register by email at [email protected].

Would Dr. Ralph Greenson murder Marilyn Monroe to fund the Anna Freud Foundation? Damning letter’s between Dr. Ralph Greenson and Anna Freud document the fact that they were colluding together to manipulate their patients out of money to fund a permanent psychiatric cure. Read the article to find out more…

Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind analyses techniques of searching for ultimate wisdom in ancient Greece. The Greeks perceived mental experiences of exceptional intensity as resulting from divine intervention. They believed that to share in the immortals' knowledge, one had to liberate the soul from the burden of the mortal body by attaining an altered state of consciousness, that is, by merging with a superhuman being or through possession by a deity. These states were often attained by inspired mediums, `impresarios of the gods' - prophets, poets, and sages - who descended into caves or underground chambers. Yulia Ustinova juxtaposes ancient testimonies with the results of modern neuropsychological research. This novel approach enables an examination of religious phenomena not only from the outside, but also from the inside: it penetrates the consciousness of people who were engaged in the vision quest, and demonstrates that the darkness of the caves provided conditions vital for their activities.

Recent research has investigated the impact of design on providing multisensory experience for people with dementia living in care homes, particularly the quality of multisensory environments (MSEs). This interdisciplinary research evolved from a broad consideration of the role of design in dementia care enhancing the wellbeing of people living with dementia and their carers. Previous research suggests that using MSE in dementia care as a resource for meaningful engagement has beneficial effects and many MSEs have been installed in UK care homes. However, evidence indicates that these spaces often fail to benefit the residents causing staff becoming discouraged and subsequently the room becoming unused. A study investigating the current facilitation of MSE in sixteen UK care homes revealed two key issues: (1) set-up and design of existing MSEs in care environments is, in most cases, not suitable for older people; (2) there is a lack of knowledge and information for care practitioners for facilitating sensory activities and environments. Based on these findings, design criteria improving usability and accessibility for people with dementia were established and user-centred design recommendations developed. As a first step towards closing the knowledge gap amongst healthcare practitioners in providing multisensory experience, initial design guidelines were published as an online resource.

In this review, we describe crossmodal plasticity following sensory loss in three parts, with each section focusing on one sensory system. We summarize a wide range of studies showing that sensory loss may lead, depending of the affected sensory system, to functional changes in other, primarily not affected senses, which range from heightened to lowered abilities. In the first part, the effects of blindness on mainly audition and touch are described. The latest findings on brain reorganization in blindness are reported, with a particular emphasis on imaging studies illustrating how nonvisual inputs recruit the visually deafferented occipital cortex. The second part covers crossmodal processing in deafness, with a special focus on the effects of deafness on visual processing. In the last portion of this review, we present the effects that the loss of a chemical sense have on the sensitivity of the other chemical senses, that is, smell, taste, and trigeminal chemosensation. We outline how the convergence of the chemical senses to the same central processing areas may lead to the observed reduction in sensitivity of the primarily not affected senses. Altogether, the studies reviewed herein illustrate the fascinating plasticity of the brain when coping with sensory deprivation.

CFF thresholds were determined for 3 normal and 3 binocularly deprived (BD) cats utilizing a simultaneous two-choice discrimination procedure. For all cats when adaptation level was steady-state for stimulus luminance. the CFF/luminana: function showed a rod-cone break which took the form of a mesopic null. When the cats were maintained in a light-adapted state CFF declined as a monotonic function of luminance. Under most luminance and adaptation levels the BD cats' CFF was slower than that of the normal cats. The BD cats' depressed CFF is interpreted as a result of their LGNd Y-cell loss.

Congenital auditory deprivation (deafness) leads to a dysfunctional intrinsic cortical microcircuitry. This chapter reviews these deficits with a particular emphasis on layer-specific activity within the primary auditory cortex. Evidence for a delay in activation of supragranular layers and reduction in activity in infragranular layers is discussed. Such deficits indicate the incompetence of the primary auditory cortex to not only properly process thalamic input and generate output within the infragranular layers, but also incorporate top-down modulations from higher order auditory cortex into the processing within primary auditory cortex. Such deficits are the consequence of a misguided postnatal development. Maturation of primary auditory cortex in deaf animals shows evidence of a developmental delay and further alterations in gross synaptic currents, spread of activation, and morphology of local field potentials recorded at the cortical surface. Additionally, degenerative changes...

My contribution to the WASP-WPA Interorganizational Symposium (prerecorded) ...

World Association of Social Psychiatry (WASP) with the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) at the 21st Virtual World Congress of Psychiatry, Cartagena, Colombia, October 16-21, 2021:
KS Gaind (Chair, University of Toronto)
V Di Nicola (Panelist, University of Montreal, GWU)
RR Gogineni (Panelist, Cooper Medical School, Rowan University)

Session Description:

At this time, the death toll from COVID-19 is approaching 3 million people worldwide. The full toll of COVID-19 far exceeds even this sobering number. Beyond the direct biological impacts of an infectious disease, the global impact of COVID-19 is revealing and magnifying pre-existing fractures in our social structures. COVID-19 has led to significant differential impacts
among groups across age, health and socio-cultural variables, whether through increased direct illness morbidity and mortality in the elderly or those with mental illness, or through indirect impacts associated with widespread societal and health system changes, including youth impacted by confinement and social isolation impinging on development of prosocial
skills, increased caregiver and family stresses ranging from financial distress to violence, and further disenfranchisement of already marginalized and vulnerable groups. At the same time, heightened public awareness and outcry about such disparities has the potential to fuel new alliances, challenging and perhaps dismantling some historical stereotypes of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability and illness. Rather than a pandemic, the global impacts reveal a syndemic – multiple pandemics along different lines, both the viral/biological pandemic, plus a social pandemic superimposed on pre-existing fault lines of inequity, poverty, mental illness, racism, sexism, ableism, ageism and other forms of stigma and discrimination. This session will include discussion of the varied impacts of COVID-19 and exploration of their root causes from a social psychiatry perspective.

Background: An abnormal head posture may be adopted for ocular or nonocular reasons. The most common ocular reasons are to maintain binocularity and to obtain the best possible visual acuity. Patients with undercorrected or overcorrected refractive errors have been reported to adopt a variety of head positions, thought to be an attempt to obtain the best possible visual acuity. Methods: Five patients with symmetric high hyperopia (at least +5.00 D) and an abnormal head posture are presented. Results: All five patients demonstrated an abnormal head posture of chin down for fixation without the spectacle correction in place. This abnormal head posture was eliminated by occlusion of either eye and also by wearing of the refractive correction. No patient demonstrated significant strabismus. Conclusion: An abnormal head posture when not wearing spectacle correction can occur in children who have high hyperopia and insignificant strabismus. This may be a mechanism by which the best visual acuity is obtained (indicated by the disappearance of the abnormal head posture on wearing of the glasses) and also to maintain binocularity (indicated by the disappearance of the abnormal head posture under monocular testing conditions). The presence of a chin-down abnormal head posture should alert the examiner to the possible presence of high hyperopia and therefore the necessity for a cycloplegic refraction.

Vision plays a central role in how we represent and interact with the world around us. Roughly, one-third of the cortical surface in primates is involved in visual processes. The loss of vision, either at birth or later in life, must therefore have profound consequences on brain organization and on the way the world is perceived and acted upon. In this chapter, we formulate a number of critical questions. Do blind individuals indeed develop supra-normal capacities for the remaining senses in order to compensate for their loss of vision? Do brains from sighted and blind individuals differ, and how? How does the brain of someone who has never had any visual perception form an image of the external world? We discuss findings from animal research as well from recent psychophysical and functional brain imaging studies in sighted and blind individuals that shed some new light on the answers to these questions.

The treatment of amblyopia by occlusion of the fellow eye is beset by problems related to compliance, stigmatization, and regression of visual acuity (VA). Atropine or optical penalization has been used as an alternative treatment for amblyopia and might be synergistic as a combination therapy. Combined optical and atropine penalization treatment (COAT) was therefore assessed in patients with anisometropic and strabismic amblyopia. Methods: Patients with a hypermetropic refractive error in whom occlusion had failed were prescribed daily atropine 1% and a plano spectacle lens to the fellow eye. Outcome measures included VA (LogMAR units), interocular VA difference, adverse events, and adverse reactions. COAT was continued until VA failed to improve after 2 consecutive visits, and then patients were offered occlusion treatment again. Results: Forty-two patients (mean age, 4.73 yrs) were treated with COAT. Patients had attempted occlusion for a mean period of 36 weeks before commencement of COAT. The mean VA of the amblyopic eyes improved after 10 weeks of COAT, from 0.85 (20/113) to 0.28 (20/37) (P Ͻ .001), an overall success (doubling of VA) rate of 76%. There was no significant change in the mean VA of the fellow eye as a result of COAT (P ϭ .13). Twenty-two patients recommenced occlusion after COAT for regression (10), lack of further improvement (2), or parental choice (10). The remaining 20 patients maintained their VA without treatment at 93% of post-COAT levels, at a mean follow-up 6.4 months. Overall regression rate was 36%, adverse reaction rate was 2%, adverse event rate was 21%, and presumed compliance rate was 83%. Discussion: COAT is an effective treatment method when occlusion therapy initially fails. COAT is well tolerated and should be considered as an alternative and/or supportive therapy in the management of amblyopia. (J AAPOS 2002;6:289-93)

The communication abilities of children of differing ages (4- 6-, and 11 years) were compared. The children performed two communication tasks and were interviewed in both face-to-face and audio-only contexts. While older children adapted to the loss of visual signals the younger age groups did not and their communication suffered. It appears that a significant amount of information which young children transmit occurs in a nonverbal format, and that visual signals are less demanding for young listeners. Such findings have implications for professionals working with young children since they show the importance of addressing both the child's visual signals and one's own.

Festination and freezing of gait (FOG) are poorly understood gait disorders that cause disability and falls in people with Parkinson disease (PD). In PD, basal ganglia malfunction leads to motor set deficits (hypokinesia), while altered motor cue production leads to a sequence effect, whereby movements becomes progressively smaller as in festination. We suggest both factors may contribute to FOG. Disturbance of set maintenance by the basal ganglia in PD has previously been examined in gait, but limited systematic evaluation of the sequence effect exists. In this study, we investigated the step-to-step amplitude relationship in 10 PD subjects with clinical evidence of festination and FOG. Four conditions were examined: off levodopa, off with attentional strategies, off with visual cues, and on levodopa. Participants demonstrated a sequence effect (F ϭ 6.24; P ϭ 0.001), which was reversed only by use of visual cues. In contrast, medication, attentional strategies, and visual cues all improved hypokinesia. Variability was marked both within and between participants in all conditions. The variability of FOG is suggested to relate to a combination of factors, including the sequence effect and its variability, as well as the severity of hypokinesia and its response to medications.

Huntington's disease (HD) is one of a group of neurodegenerative diseases caused by an expanded trinucleotide (CAG) repeat coding for an extended polyglutamine tract. The disease is inherited in an autosomal dominant manner, with onset of motor, cognitive, and psychiatric symptoms typically occurring in midlife, followed by unremitting progression and eventual death. We report here that motor presymptomatic R6/1 HD mice show a severe impairment of somatosensory-discrimination learning ability in a behavioral task that depends heavily on the barrel cortex. In parallel, there are deficits in barrel-cortex plasticity after a somatosensory whisker-deprivation paradigm. The present study demonstrates deficits in neocortical plasticity correlated with a specific learning impairment involving the same neocortical area, a finding that provides new insight into the cellular basis of early cognitive deficits in HD.

Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) have been developed with the ultimate purpose of supporting sensory deprived individuals in their daily activities. However, more than forty years after their first appearance in the scientific literature, SSDs still remain more common in research laboratories than in the daily life of people with sensory deprivation. Here, we seek to identify the reasons behind the limited diffusion of SSDs among the blind community by discussing the ergonomic, neurocognitive and psychosocial issues potentially associated with the use of these systems. We stress that these issues should be considered together when developing future devices or improving existing ones. We provide some examples of how to achieve this by adopting a multidisciplinary and participatory approach. These efforts would contribute not solely to address fundamental theoretical research questions, but also to better understand the everyday needs of blind people and eventually promote the use ...

The purpose of this study was to compare the postural sway profiles of 9/10-year-old children with developmental coordination disorder and balance problems (DCD-BP, n = 64) with those of non-DCD children (n = 71). We measured center of pressure excursions in conditions with and without vision for 30 s while standing still on the dominant leg, the non-dominant leg, or both legs. Sway area, total path length, and Romberg's quotient were analyzed. Most measures differed significantly between groups, except sway area when the children stood with vision on either the dominant leg or both legs. When standing on the dominant leg or both legs, DCD-BP children demonstrated greater total path length in all conditions and a greater sway area in without-vision conditions. DCD-BP children showed more difficulty standing on the non-dominant leg with eyes both open and closed. While boys showed results similar to the total group, the girls with DCD-BP only exhibited significant differences in three conditions with eyes closed, but not with eyes open. Analysis of Romberg's coefficient also indicated that children with DCD-BP did not over-rely on visual information.

Why is microstrabismus often a result of foveal suppression despite normal peripheral fusion? Why is the microstrabismus usually an esotropic one? The authors tested the hypothesis that bifoveal fusion disruption by anisometropia directly affects ocular motor function. A Nidek MP-1 microperimeter was used with 94 children with anisometropic hyperopia between the ages of 5 and 13. Forty-three healthy controls were also included. This was performed prospectively over a 2.5year period. Stereoacuity was correlated with fixation instability. All children with normal stereoacuity had stable fixation. Children with nil stereoacuity displayed the most instability. Visual acuity of the poorer seeing eye was correlated to a lesser degree. The eye movement recordings were of sufficient quality in 81/94 children. The flick microesotropic eye movements were actually found to be fusion maldevelopment nystagmus movements (FMNS)(nasalward slowdrift with a temporalward refoveating fast-phase microsaccade). Binocular decorrelation was found to be critical for the development of FMNS; visual acuity impairment is not required. The presented data support the hypothesis that anisometropia disrupts ocular motor development and can cause reduced stereoacuity and abnormal binocular visual experience.

Health care professionals assume that tube feeding is an unpleasant, distressing experience for patients, which is only partially substantiated by experience. Thirty patients were interviewed via a tube feeding and hospital experience checklist (a 47-item interview schedule). Common experiences were operationally defined as those felt by at least 50%; subject ively distressful experiences were those identified by patients as causing distress. The most common and most distressful experiences of nasogastric tube feeding were: sensory irritations and sensory deprivation. The psychosensory irritation experiences were: thirst, sore nose or throat, dry mouth, runny nose, a tube in the nose, taking food through a tube, breathing through the mouth, breathing with a tube in the nose, taking food in a treatment type container, and taking food with a different texture and smell than usual. .The psychosensory deprivation experiences were: an unsatisfied appetite for certain foods, deprivation of tasting, chewing, swallowing food, and drinking liquids, limited mobility, and deprivation of regular food. Except for burping, gastrointestinal symptoms were not common though they were usually distressful. This information has been used to develop teaching programs which are being tested for effectiveness in reducing distress associated with nasogastric tube feeding.

The refraction of 12 street cats' eyes and of 11 caged cats was measured by retinoscopy. and the anteroposterior (axial) length of the eyeball was measured by ultrasound. While 87.5 per cem of eyes in street cats were found hypermetropic (average + 1.14 D). among cats caged for periods of 8.5-14.0 months under conditions of near vision. 68.2 per cent were myopic (average.-062 D). The anteroposterior length of the eyeball was practically equal in both groups (1@43 mm): it was also practically equal for myopic and hqpermetropic eyes. The site of the refractive changes is discussed.

Purpose: The localizing value of ear plugging in the treatment of auditory onset partial seizures, to our knowledge, has not been previously described. We propose that ear plugging is a clinical response to a sensory seizure manifested as an auditory hallucination and a tool for identifying the seizure focus in the auditory cortex on the superior temporal gyrus.