Advancements in brain-computer interfaces for the rehabilitation of unilateral spatial neglect: a concise review.

This short review examines recent advancements in neurotechnologies within the context of managing unilateral spatial neglect (USN), a common condition following stroke. Despite the success of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) in restoring motor function, there is a notable absence of effective BCI devices for treating cerebral visual impairments, a prevalent consequence of brain lesions that significantly hinders rehabilitation. This review analyzes current non-invasive BCIs and technological solutions dedicated to cognitive rehabilitation, with a focus on visuo-attentional disorders.

Are we aware of neural activity in primary visual cortex? A neuropsychological case study.

Objective: According to a seminal hypothesis stated by Crick and Koch in 1995, one is not aware of neural activity in primary visual cortex (V1) because this region lacks reciprocal connections with prefrontal cortex (PFC).

Methods: We provide here a neuropsychological illustration of this hypothesis in a patient with a very rare form of cortical blindness: ventral and dorsal cortical pathways were lesioned bilaterally while V1 areas were partially preserved.

Results: Visual stimuli escaped conscious perception but still activated V1 regions that were functionally disconnected from PFC.

Melatonin in Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Critical Literature Review.

The article presents a review of the relationships between melatonin and neurodevelopmental disorders. First, the antioxidant properties of melatonin and its physiological effects are considered to understand better the role of melatonin in typical and atypical neurodevelopment. Then, several neurodevelopmental disorders occurring during infancy, such as autism spectrum disorder or neurogenetic disorders associated with autism (including Smith-Magenis syndrome, Angelman syndrome, Rett's syndrome, Tuberous sclerosis, or Williams-Beuren syndrome) and neurodevelopmental disorders occurring later in adulthood like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, are discussed with regard to impaired melatonin production and circadian rhythms, in particular, sleep-wake rhythms.

Beyond empathy: Cognitive capabilities increase or curb altruism in middle childhood.

Altruistic behavior, which intentionally benefits a recipient without expectation of a reward or at a cost to the actor, is observed throughout the lifespan from everyday interactions to emergency situations. Empathy has long been considered a major driver of altruistic action, but the social information processing model supports the idea that other cognitive processes may also play a role in altruistic intention and behavior. Our aim was to investigate how visual analysis, attention, inhibitory control, and theory of mind capabilities uniquely contribute to predicting altruistic intention and behavior in a sample of 67 French children (35 girls and 32 boys; M = 9.

Commentary: Profiling Children With Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI) Using Multiple Methods of Assessment to Aid in Differential Diagnosis.

PROFILING CHILDREN WITH CEREBRAL VISUAL IMPAIRMENT USING MULTIPLE METHODS OF ASSESSMENT TO AID IN DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS: Amanda H. Lueck , Gordon N. Dutton , Sylvie Chokron Seminars in Pediatric Neurology Volume 31, October 2019, Pages 5-14 Cerebral (cortical) visual impairment (CVI), the primary cause of visual impairment in chil dren in high-income countries, is increasing globally due to improved life-saving measures for premature and full-term infants.

From vision to cognition: potential contributions of cerebral visual impairment to neurodevelopmental disorders.

Vision has a crucial role to play in human development and functioning. It is, therefore, not surprising that vision plays a fundamental role in the development of the child. As a consequence, an alteration in visual function is, therefore, likely to hinder the child's development.

The nature of blindsight: implications for current theories of consciousness.

Blindsight regroups the different manifestations of preserved discriminatory visual capacities following the damage to the primary visual cortex. Blindsight types differentially impact objective and subjective perception, patients can report having no visual awareness whilst their behaviour suggests visual processing still occurs at some cortical level. This phenomenon hence presents a unique opportunity to study consciousness and perceptual consciousness, and for this reason, it has had an historical importance for the development of this field of research.

Theoretical Perspective on an Ideomotor Brain-Computer Interface: Toward a Naturalistic and Non-invasive Brain-Computer Interface Paradigm Based on Action-Effect Representation.

Recent years have been marked by the fulgurant expansion of non-invasive Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) devices and applications in various contexts (medical, industrial etc.). This technology allows agents "to directly act with thoughts," bypassing the peripheral motor system.

High spatial frequency filtered primes hastens happy faces categorization in autistic adults.

Coarse information of a visual stimulus is conveyed by Low Spatial Frequencies (LSF) and is thought to be rapidly extracted to generate predictions. This may guide fast recognition with the subsequent integration of fine information, conveyed by High Spatial Frequencies (HSF). In autism, emotional face recognition is challenging, and might be related to alterations in LSF predictive processes.

Cortical Visual Impairments and Learning Disabilities.

Medical advances in neonatology have improved the survival rate of premature infants, as well as children who are born under difficult neurological conditions. As a result, the prevalence of cerebral dysfunctions, whether minimal or more severe, is increasing in all industrialized countries and in some developing nations. Whereas in the past, ophthalmological diseases were considered principally responsible for severe visual impairment, today, all recent epidemiological studies show that the primary cause of blindness and severe visual impairment in children in industrialized countries is now neurological, with lesions acquired around the time of birth currently comprising the commonest contributor.

Temporal preparation in adults with autistic spectrum disorder: The variable foreperiod effect.

Research suggested the possibility that temporal cognition may be different in autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). Although there are some empirical studies examining timing ability in these individuals, to our knowledge, no one directly assessed the ability to predict when an event will occur. Here, we report a study on implicit temporal preparation in individuals with ASD as indexed by the variable foreperiod (FP) effect.

Melatonin: From Pharmacokinetics to Clinical Use in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The role of melatonin has been extensively investigated in pathophysiological conditions, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Reduced melatonin secretion has been reported in ASD and led to many clinical trials using immediate-release and prolonged-release oral formulations of melatonin. However, melatonin's effects in ASD and the choice of formulation type require further study.

Emotional face recognition in autism and in cerebral visual impairments: In search for specificity.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by difficulties in the social domain, but also by hyper- and hypo-reactivity. Atypical visual behaviours and processing have often been observed. Nevertheless, several similar signs are also identified in other clinical conditions including cerebral visual impairments (CVI).

The Need to Look for Visual Deficit After Stroke in Children.

To evaluate the role of the ophthalmologist in the management of children with arterial stroke, at presentation and during follow-up. This retrospective case series comprised children with arterial stroke who were followed for at least 12 months in a tertiary pediatric medical center in 2005-2016. Demographic data and findings on radiological neuroimaging and ophthalmological and neurological examination were retrieved from the medical files.

Visual Field Defect Before and After Endovascular Treatment of Occipital Arteriovenous Malformations.

Background: Occipital arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) carry a high risk of postoperative morbidity because of their anatomic relation to the visual cortex and optic radiations. Data regarding endovascular management of these lesions are scant.

Objective: To report our single-center experience with occipital AVMs, most of which were treated endovascularly, with a special interest for postoperative visual impairment.

The inter-relationships between cerebral visual impairment, autism and intellectual disability.

From birth, vision guides our movement, facilitates social interaction and accords recognition and understanding of the environment. In children, vision underpins development of these skills, and is crucial for typical development. Deficits in visual processing may lead to impairment of cognitive, motor, and social development, placing children at risk of developing features of autism.

Making sense of blindsense: a reply to Phillips.

We recently published the results of a study on the occurrence of blindsight among eight, post-stroke homonymous hemianopic (HH) patients (Garric et al., 2019), in whom we measured blindsight through forced-choice tasks and assessed perceptual experiences by a new awareness scale, the Sensation Awareness Scale (SAS). Within the cohort, we found different profiles of dissociation between objective and subjective performance.

Neuroanatomic correlates of visual hallucinations in poststroke hemianopic patients.

Objectives: Homonymous hemianopia (HH) is the most frequent visual-field defect after a stroke. Some of these patients also have visual hallucinations, the origin and frequency of which remain largely unknown. The aims of this work were to determine the occurrence of visual hallucinations among poststroke hemianopic patients in function of the location (Brodmann areas) of the brain lesion, as determined by MRI, and to study the neuroanatomic correlates of these hallucinations by nature, frequency, and type.

Dissociations between perception and awareness in hemianopia.

The most common visual defect to follow a lesion of the retrochiasmal pathways is homonymous hemianopia (HH), whereby patients are blind to the contralesional visual field of each eye. Homonymous hemianopia has been studied in terms of its deleterious consequences on perceptual, cognitive and motor tasks as well as because it represents an interesting model of vision loss after a unilateral lesion of the occipital lobe. From a behavioral perspective, in addition to exhibiting a severe deficit in their contralesional visual field, HH patients can also exhibit dissociations between perception and awareness.

Modification of both functional neurological symptoms and neuroimaging patterns with a good anatomoclinical concordance: a case report.

Background: In the nineteenth century, Jean Martin Charcot explained functional neurological disorder (formerly called conversion disorder) as a "psychodynamic" lesion. Numerous advances in neuroimaging have permitted identification of the neural underpinnings of this disorder.

Case Presentation: Herein we describe a case of functional neurological disorder (FND) with initial left sensorimotor deficit, in-coordinated limb movements, neglect, clouded consciousness, slurred speech and a semiology of visual impairment.

Profiling Children With Cerebral Visual Impairment Using Multiple Methods of Assessment to Aid in Differential Diagnosis.

Cerebral (cortical) visual impairment (CVI), the primary cause of visual impairment in children in high-income countries, is increasing globally due to improved life-saving measures for premature and full-term infants. Yet the consequences of this condition are only beginning to be understood and addressed. According to the topography, site, and the extent of the pathology, the deficit may variably concern central visual functions, visual field, perception of movement, visual analysis, visual exploration, attention, or visual memory, as well as visual guidance of movement.

Dissociation between objective and subjective perceptual experiences in a population of hemianopic patients: A new form of blindsight?

After a post-chiasmatic lesion, some patients may retain unconscious visual function, known as blindsight, in their contralesional visual field. Despite the importance of blindsight in the study of consciousness, little is known about the nature of patients' experience in their hemianopic field. To address this knowledge gap, we measured blindsight, and assessed the perceptual experience in the contralesional visual field, of seventeen homonymous hemianopic (HH) patients.

Exploring Self-Consciousness From Self- and Other-Image Recognition in the Mirror: Concepts and Evaluation.

A historical review of the concepts of self-consciousness is presented, highlighting the important role of the (particularly, body perception but also body action), and the in the construction of self-consciousness. More precisely, body perception, especially intermodal sensory perception including kinesthetic perception, is involved in the construction of a sense of self allowing self-other differentiation. Furthermore, the , through very early social and emotional interactions, provides meaning to the infant's perception and contributes to the development of his/her symbolization capacities.

[Children with high potential and difficulties: Contributions of clinical research].

We have been sensitized to children with high intellectual potential (HIP) having difficulties given the number of children consulting in our outpatient medico-psychological centres for scholastic problems (possibly leading to school failure), anxiety disorders or behavioral disorders such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and in which a high intellectual potential was discovered during psychological assessments. It is the contrast, and more precisely the paradox, between the high intellectual potential of these children and their scholastic difficulties (including school failure), and the psychic suffering expressed by some of them, which led us to question, challenge and propose therapeutic and educational care adapted to these children. It is in this context that we created in December 2005 the CNAHP (National Center for Assistance to High Potential children and adolescents) which is a public centre integrated into the hospital-university department of child and adolescent psychiatry at Rennes.