Midlevel visual deficits after strokes involving area human V4.

We present the results of 51 stroke patients with free central visual fields of which about half suffer from clear deficits of midlevel vision undetected by standard clinical tests. These patients yield significantly elevated thresholds for detection and/or discrimination between forms defined by motion, colour, or line orientation ('texture'). As demonstrated by voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) the underlying lesions involve mainly area human V4 (hV4) located in the posterior third of the fusiform gyrus and extending into the lingual gyrus.

Pure alexia with intact perception of complex visual stimuli: a case study.

After a stroke involving the left occipitotemporal cortex our patient shows a word-length effect and has problems to identify letters or numbers in strings of symbols. But he is normal in identifying isolated letters and in non-verbally categorizing even complex images such as faces or natural scenes. His cortical lesion is stretching from the visual word form area (VWFA) anteriorly causing additional problems to name visual stimuli and to match acoustic stimuli with images.

On the Mechanics of Immediate Corrections and Aftereffects in Prism Adaptation.

Prisms laterally shifting the perceived visual world cause arm movements to deviate from intended targets. The resulting error-the direct effect-both for pointing and throwing movements, usually corresponds to only around half of the prism's optical power due to an "immediate correction effect". We investigated the mechanisms of this immediate correction effect.

Limited Plasticity of Prismatic Visuomotor Adaptation.

Movements toward an object displaced optically through prisms adapt quickly, a striking example for the plasticity of neuronal visuomotor programs. We investigated the degree and time course of this system's plasticity. Participants performed goal-directed throwing or pointing movements with terminal feedback before, during, and after wearing prism goggles shifting the visual world laterally either to the right or to the left.

Neurological and neuropsychological characteristics of occipital, occipito-temporal and occipito-parietal infarction.

Neuropsychological deficits after occipital infarction are most often described in case studies and only a small sample of studies has attempted to exactly correlate the anatomical localization of lesions with associated neuropsychological symptoms. The present study investigated a large number of patients (N = 128) in order to provide an overview of neurological and neuropsychological deficits after occipital, occipito-temporal and occipito-parietal infarction. A particular approach of the study was to define exact anatomical correlates of neuropsychological dysfunction by using voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) in 61 patients.

Electrophysiological correlates of binocular stereo depth without binocular disparities.

A small region of background presented to only one eye in an otherwise binocular display may, under certain conditions, be resolved in the visual system by interpreting the region as a small gap between two similar objects placed at different depths, with the gap hidden in one eye by parallax. This has been called monocular gap stereopsis. We investigated the electrophysiological correlate of this type of stereopsis by means of sum potential recordings in 12 observers, comparing VEP's for this stimulus ("Gillam Stereo", Author BG has strong reservations about this term) with those for similar stimuli containing disparity based depth and with no depth (flat).

How Much of the "Unconscious" is Just Pre - Threshold?

Visual awareness is a specific form of consciousness. Binocular rivalry, the alternation of visual consciousness resulting when the two eyes view differing stimuli, allows one to experimentally investigate visual awareness. Observers usually indicate the gradual changes of conscious perception in binocular rivalry by a binary measure: pressing a button.

Impaired temporal, not just spatial, resolution in amblyopia.

Purpose: In amblyopia, neuronal deficits deteriorate spatial vision including visual acuity, possibly because of a lack of use-dependent fine-tuning of afferents to the visual cortex during infancy; but temporal processing may deteriorate as well.

Methods: Temporal, rather than spatial, resolution was investigated in patients with amblyopia by means of a task based on time-defined figure-ground segregation. Patients had to indicate the quadrant of the visual field where a purely time-defined square appeared.

Cortical correlates of stereoscopic depth produced by temporal delay.

Stereoscopic depth processing for static objects depends on retinal disparities between the two eyes and has been shown in previous functional imaging (fMRI) work to involve widely distributed activity in the human visual cortex, including both dorsal and ventral streams. Stereoscopic depth processing of moving objects, on the other hand, can be produced by purely temporal lags between the eyes, and the cortical basis for this kind of stereopsis has received less attention. Using fMRI in human subjects, we measured the activations produced by dynamic visual noise both when it was in phase between the eyes and appeared two-dimensional (2D) and when an interocular delay made it appear like a 3D rotating cylinder.

Colour constancy and conscious perception of changes of illuminant.

A sudden change in illuminant (e.g., the outcome of turning on a tungsten light in a room illuminated with dim, natural daylight) causes a "global" change in perceived colour which subjects often recognise as a change of illuminant.

Differential impact of parvocellular and magnocellular pathways on visual impairment in apperceptive agnosia?

The term "visual form agnosia" describes a disorder characterized by problems recognizing objects, poor copying,and distinguishing between simple geometric shapes despite normal intellectual abilities. Visual agnosia has been interpreted as a disorder of the magnocellular visual system, caused by an inability to separate figure from ground by sampling information from extended regions of space and to integrate it with fine-grain local information. However,this interpretation has hardly been tested with neuropsychological or functional brain imaging methods, mainly because the magnocellular and parvocellular structures are highly interconnected in the visual system.