Postural control depends on early visual experience.

The present study investigated the role of early visual experience in the development of postural control (balance) and locomotion (gait). In a cross-sectional design, balance and gait were assessed in 59 participants (ages 7-43 years) with a history of (a) transient congenital blindness, (b) transient late-onset blindness, (c) permanent congenitally blindness, or (d) permanent late-onset blindness, as well as in normally sighted controls. Cataract-reversal participants who experienced a transient phase of blindness and gained sight through cataract removal surgery showed worse balance performance compared with sighted controls even when tested with eyes closed.

Frequency of adapting events affects face aftereffects but not blur aftereffects.

The dynamics of visual adaptation remain poorly understood. Recent studies have found that the strength of adaptation aftereffects in the perception of numerosity depends more strongly on the number of adaptation events than on the duration of the adaptation. We investigated whether such effects can be observed for other visual attributes.

Stimulus-evoked and resting-state alpha oscillations show a linked dependence on patterned visual experience for development.

Persistent visual impairments after congenital blindness due to dense bilateral cataracts have been attributed to altered visual cortex development within a sensitive period. Occipital alpha (8-14 Hz) oscillations were found to be reduced after congenital cataract reversal, while participants performed visual motion tasks. However, it has been unclear whether reduced alpha oscillations were task-specific, or linked to impaired visual behavior in cataract-reversed individuals.

Active vision in sight recovery individuals with a history of long-lasting congenital blindness.

What we see is intimately linked to how we actively and systematically explore the world through eye movements. However, it is unknown to what degree visual experience during early development is necessary for such systematic visual exploration to emerge. The present study investigated visual exploration behavior in ten human participants whose sight had been restored only in childhood or adulthood, after a period of congenital blindness due to dense bilateral congenital cataracts.

Audiovisual spatial recalibration but not integration is shaped by early sensory experience.

To clarify the role of sensory experience during early development for adult multisensory learning capabilities, we probed audiovisual spatial processing in human individuals who had been born blind because of dense congenital cataracts (CCs) and who subsequently had received cataract removal surgery, some not before adolescence or adulthood. Their ability to integrate audio-visual input and to recalibrate multisensory spatial representations was compared to normally sighted control participants and individuals with a history of developmental (later onset) cataracts. Results in CC individuals revealed both normal multisensory integration in audiovisual trials (ventriloquism effect) and normal recalibration of unimodal auditory localization following audiovisual discrepant exposure (ventriloquism aftereffect) as observed in the control groups.

Steady state evoked potentials indicate changes in nonlinear neural mechanisms of vision in sight recovery individuals.

Humans with a transient phase of congenital pattern vision deprivation have been observed to feature prevailing deficits, particularly in higher order visual functions. However, the neural correlates of these prevalent visual impairments remain unclear. To probe different visual processing stages, we measured steady state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) generated by luminance flicker stimuli at 6.

The size-weight illusion is unimpaired in individuals with a history of congenital visual deprivation.

Visual deprivation in childhood can lead to lifelong impairments in multisensory processing. Here, the Size-Weight Illusion (SWI) was used to test whether visuo-haptic integration recovers after early visual deprivation. Normally sighted individuals perceive larger objects to be lighter than smaller objects of the same weight.

An electrophysiological biomarker for the classification of cataract-reversal patients: A case-control study.

Background: Untreated congenital blindness through cataracts leads to lasting visual brain system changes, including substantial alterations of extrastriate visual areas. Consequently, late-treated individuals (> 5 months of age) with dense congenital bilateral cataracts (CC) exhibit poorer visual function recovery compared to individuals with bilateral developmental cataracts (DC). Reliable methods to differentiate between patients with congenital and developmental cataracts are often lacking, impeding efficient rehabilitation management and introducing confounds in clinical and basic research on recovery prognosis and optimal timing of surgery.

Biological Action Identification Does Not Require Early Visual Input for Development.

Visual input during the first years of life is vital for the development of numerous visual functions. While normal development of global motion perception seems to require visual input during an early sensitive period, the detection of biological motion (BM) does not seem to do so. A more complex form of BM processing is the identification of human actions.

Sensory experience during early sensitive periods shapes cross-modal temporal biases.

Typical human perception features stable biases such as perceiving visual events as later than synchronous auditory events. The origin of such perceptual biases is unknown. To investigate the role of early sensory experience, we tested whether a congenital, transient loss of pattern vision, caused by bilateral dense cataracts, has sustained effects on audio-visual and tactile-visual temporal biases and resolution.

Successful visually guided eye movements following sight restoration after congenital cataracts.

Sensitive periods have previously been identified for several human visual system functions. Yet, it is unknown to what degree the development of visually guided oculomotor control depends on early visual experience-for example, whether and to what degree humans whose sight was restored after a transient period of congenital visual deprivation are able to conduct visually guided eye movements. In the present study, we developed new calibration and analysis techniques for eye tracking data contaminated with pervasive nystagmus, which is typical for this population.

Color vision in sight recovery individuals.

Background: Color vision has been consistently shown to be unaffected in animals that are raised in dark or in color-deprived environments. However, there are only a few studies that directly addressed the effect of congenital visual deprivation in color perception in humans.

Objective: The goal of the current study was to assess the effect of congenital visual deprivation on color vision using a panel based color arrangement test.

A Protracted Sensitive Period Regulates the Development of Cross-Modal Sound-Shape Associations in Humans.

Humans preferentially match arbitrary words containing higher- and lower-frequency phonemes to angular and smooth shapes, respectively. Here, we investigated the role of visual experience in the development of audiovisual and audiohaptic sound-shape associations (SSAs) using a unique set of five groups: individuals who had suffered a transient period of congenital blindness through congenital bilateral dense cataracts before undergoing cataract-reversal surgeries (CC group), individuals with a history of developmental cataracts (DC group), individuals with congenital permanent blindness (CB group), individuals with late permanent blindness (LB group), and controls with typical sight (TS group). Whereas the TS and LB groups showed highly robust SSAs, the CB, CC, and DC groups did not-in any of the modality combinations tested.