Multisensory Rehabilitation of Vision Loss After Cortical Damage
Wake Forest University Health Sciences
Summary
Damage to visual cortex on one side of the brain frequently produces a profound and permanent blindness in contralesional space (hemianopia), a debilitating condition that causes enormous suffering for patients and their families.
Description
The over-arching objective of the current proposal is to evaluate the functional recovery of vision in hemianopic (blindness in one hemifield) and quadrantanopic (blindness in one quadrant) patients engaged with a multisensory training paradigm. This will pave the way for clinical trials in which this simple, non-invasive training paradigm can be developed for therapeutic use to treat blindness resulting from cortical damage.
Eligibility
- Age range
- 18–85 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- No
Inclusion Criteria: * Patients will be recruited from the local subject population hospitalized/seen by Ophthalmology, Neurosurgery, and Neurology at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist * diagnosis of stable homonymous hemianopia (\>4 weeks) with absence of hemineglect * a lesion encompassing at least primary visual cortex but sparing parietal cortex, to include lesions caused by an ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke or post-surgical changes due to an oncologic or non-oncologic tumor * normal or correctable auditory and cognitive function * willingness to participate in the three-month program * ab…
Interventions
- BehavioralMultisensory Rehabilitation
12 research sessions + clinical visits at the time of the first and last session - In each session, there will be a "training phase" in which subjects will be exposed (and respond) to spatiotemporally congruent pairs of visual-auditory stimuli presented within their blinded field, with occasional probes of unisensory visual stimuli on both sides of space. There will also be a "testing" phase during which they are presented with visual stimuli in virtual reality (VR) to assess multiple aspects of visual function. This "visual battery" consists of innocuous stimuli, e.g., flashes of light or moving bars, presented at intensities consistent with those experienced during daily life. Subjects detect or discriminate the stimuli (e.g., judge whether a stimulus was flashed, or which stimulus is brighter) and report confidence in assessments.
Location
- Wake Forest University Health SciencesWinston-Salem, North Carolina