Background: The perceptions surrounding assistive technology have been shown to be increasingly stigmatizing in older adult populations. This stigmatization can lead individuals to the abandonment of the assistive device. Until now, the methods of identifying or predicting the stigma surrounding assistive technology has mostly been qualitative in nature. Here we present a novel quantitate and qualitative research study that uses neuro-cognitive (psychophysics and EEG) and eye tracking technology, in addition to a new questionnaire to investigate the stigma associated with assistive devices. Therefore, this approach plays a major role in understanding and predicting the neural and physiological correlates associated to stigma.
Methods: Thirty-four older adults (>50 years) took part in the study. To determine the psychophysiological predictors of stigma surrounding assistive technologies, we monitored brain activity using EEG, heart rate and eye movements using an eye-tracker while participants viewed a series of images containing either an older or younger individual in different social scenarios (e.g., talking to doctor, at coffee shop). In each scenario, the individual uses either no assistive device, a low stigmatizing device (e.g., iPad), or a high stigmatizing device (e.g., electronic magnifier).
Results: Here we present preliminary analysis of the eye movement data. Analysis shows that in comparison to images that contained a low stigmatizing device, in images that contain high stigmatizing devices, the latency to fixate the device is shorter, first fixation duration is longer, and the total number of fixations on the device are higher. The environment that the devices is used in has no effect on eye movement metrics.
Conclusions: Although the sample size is small, and based on a healthy older-adult population, these initial observations would indicate that latency to fixate and first fixation duration are predictors of stigma associated with assistive devices. Future research should expand this prediction to those actively using assistive devices, and how the measures predict abandonment over time.
Background: Cognitive control is defined as the ability to act flexibly in the environment by either behaving automatically or inhibiting said automatic behaviour and it can be measured using an interleaved pro/anti-saccade task. Decline in cognitive control has been attributed to normal aging and neurological illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) as well as decline in other cognitive abilities. This parallel might highlight the role played by cognitive control in information processing and working memory. However, little is known about the relationship between cognitive control and other cognitive processes such as visual memory, decision making, and visual search. We thus propose to correlate the incidence of impaired cognitive control with deficits in visual memory, decision making and visual search in three groups: younger adults, older adults and patients with idiopathic PD.
Methods: Seventy-one participants, namely 34 adults (M =22.75, SD =3.8), 22 older adults (M =67.4, SD =8.3), and 20 PD patients (M =65.59, SD =8.2) performed four tasks: interleaved pro/anti-saccade, visual memory, decision making, and serial and pop-out visual search.
Results: Results show that within each group, anti-saccade error rate (ER) were significantly and negatively correlated with visual memory ER (ryounger =?0.378, P=0.036; rolder =?0.440, Polder =0.046; rPD =?0.609, P=0.016). On the other hand, correct decision-making reaction times (RT) were significantly correlated with anti-saccade ER, and RTs only in older adults (rER =0.529, P=0.014; rRT =0.512, P=0.018) and PD patients (rER =0.727, P=0.012; rRT =0.769, P=0.001). For visual search, PD patients showed a significant relationship between RTs for correct pro-saccades and pop-out (r=0.665, P=0.007), and serial (r=0.641, P=0.010) search RTs. Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between MoCA scores and anti-saccade RTs (r=?0.559, P=0.030) and ER (r=?0.562, P=0.029) in PD patients. Taken together, these results support the hypothesis of PD patients’ reliance on bottom-up processes as top-down processes decline. For younger adults, there was a significant correlation between serial search performance and both anti-saccade ER (r=0.488, P=0.005), and correct pro-saccade ER (r=0.413, P=0.021). In older adults, this relationship was absent, but anti-saccade ER significantly correlated with pop-out search times (r=0.473, P=0.030).
Conclusions: We found significant relationships between cognitive tasks and cognitive control as measured through the interleaved pro/anti-saccade task across and within participant groups, providing evidence of the appropriateness of the use of the interleaved pro/anti-saccade task as a measure of overall cognitive control.
Background: Understanding how individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) learn is important for developing and implementing effective educational and behavioral interventions. Evidence suggests that individuals with ASD are relatively stronger in certain areas of perception (Simmons et al., 2009; Dakin and Frith, 2005); it therefore cannot be assumed that individuals with ASD learn using the same rules and strategies as neurotypicals (NT). Of particular interest, perceptual learning (PL) is a class of learning that is based upon changes induced by the repeated exposure and response to specific types of perceptual information. Such learning often includes feedback, indicating whether or not a response was correct during a trial within a PL task. The objectives of this study were to perform a pilot investigation of; (I) perceptual learning in adults with and without ASD using a low-level orientation discrimination task; and (II) the influence of feedback on accuracy in this task.
Methods: Eleven adults with ASD and fifteen NT adults, matched on Wechsler full-scale IQ and age (18–31 years), performed a low-level PL task. They were asked to indicate whether a grating was tilted to the left (i.e., counter-clockwise) or to the right (i.e., clockwise) relative to an oblique 45-degree reference orientation. Thresholds, defined by the minimal deviation in degrees needed to discriminate tilt orientation, were measured for each participant every 15 minutes, with each block consisting of 420 trials. To assess baseline performance, all participants completed a first block with no feedback. Participants were then randomly assigned to either feedback (NASD =6, NTD =8) or no feedback groups (NASD =5, NTD =7) and completed six subsequent testing blocks.
Results: PL was defined as the percent change in orientation discrimination threshold in each of the six testing blocks relative to baseline performance. No significant increase was found in performance as a function of testing block for any group; PL was therefore not evidenced under the conditions tested. ASD performance remained equal to that of baseline across testing blocks, whether or not trial-by-trial feedback was present. In contrast, NT performance was significantly increased when feedback was present.
Conclusions: NT individuals significantly benefited from feedback, while individuals with ASD did not. These results provide preliminary evidence for a divergent learning style in ASD and NT individuals. These pilot findings raise important questions regarding the impact of feedback during interventions, and at a more basic level, the atypical underlying perceptual and cognitive processes in individuals with ASD.
Background: Perceptual profiles, or the performance on visual-perceptual tasks that reflect early visual information processing, have been used to suggest condition-specific visuo-perceptual abilities across neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs). The complexity-specific hypothesis (Bertone et al., 2010) was based on perceptual profiles defined by a selective decrease in sensitivity to more complex, texture-defined information in adults with autism and fragile-x syndrome, suggesting the atypical development of neural networks underlying early perception in NDCs. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the complexity-specific hypothesis is applicable to children and adolescents with different NDCs by defining and comparing their perceptual profiles.
Methods: A single interval, two alternative forced-choice identification paradigm was used to measure the perceptual profiles of 64 participants with a NDC (MIQ =78) and 43 typically developing (TD) participants (MIQ =103), aged 5 to 17 years. Participants with a NDC were diagnosed with either: autism spectrum disorder (ASD, n=32), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, n=9), or intellectual disability (ID, n=12). Perceptual profiles were defined by measuring participants’ sensitivity to static (orientation identification task) and dynamic (direction identification task) gratings (1 cpd) defined by either luminance (simple) or texture (complex) information. The Weschler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence 2 (WASI-2) was used as a measure of cognitive ability.
Results: When performance was averaged across NDC and TD participants, no between-group difference in sensitivity was found for any of the conditions assessed. However, when assessed as a function of diagnosis, we found that the ID group was less sensitive to both the luminance (P=0.04) and texture-defined (P=0.01) dynamic information when compared to the TD group. Notably, although the perceptual profile of the ASD group was similar of that of the TD group, a significant positive relationship between mental age and sensitivity to both texture-defined static (r=?0.5) and dynamic (r=?0.4) information was found.
Conclusions: The ?ndings demonstrate that different conditions-specific perceptual profiles exist across children and adolescents with different types of NDCs, exemplified by differences found in this study for the ID group. In addition, the positive relationship between perceptual performance and mental age within the ASD group suggests that these perceptual abilities may still be undergoing maturation during the age-range assessed, and provides support for the complexity-specific hypothesis specific to the ASD profile during development. These results exemplify the importance of defining perceptual profiles at different periods of development across NDCs, since the tenets of most perceptually-relevant cognitive theories are based primarily on adult data.
Background: Patching an eye for a period of 2 hours results in a period of plasticity where inter-ocular balance shifts in favor of the patched eye. Acetylcholine has been shown to improve visual function and augment adult neural plasticity. Here we evaluate whether administering the cholinesterase inhibitor donepezil enhances the magnitude or duration of the patching induced shift in ocular balance.
Methods: We used a double-blind drug treatment design to test the effect of donepezil and patching on the shift in ocular balance. We used a well-known binocular phase combination task to measure ocular balance before and after treatment.
Results: Our results demonstrate that donepezil does not enhance, and may actually reduce the magnitude and duration of the patching-induced shift in ocular balance.
Conclusions: Patching induced adult neural plasticity does not appear to be modulated by the cholinergic system, however, increased dose or longer drug administration periods may yield significant results. Future studies on binocular rivalry are in the pipeline.
Background: The perception of visual forms is crucial for effective interactions with our environment and for the recognition of visual objects. Thus, to determine the codes underlying this function is a fundamental theoretical objective in the study of the visual forms perception. The vast majority of research in the field is based on a hypothetico-deductive approach. Thus, we first begin by formulating a theory, then we make predictions and finally we conduct experimental tests. After decades of application of this approach, the field remains far from having a consensus as to the traits underlying the representation of visual form. Our goal is to determine, without theoretical a priori or any bias whatsoever, the information underlying the discrimination and recognition of 3D visual forms in normal human adults.
Methods: To this end, the adaptive bubble technique developed by Wang et al. [2011] is applied on six 3D synthetic objects under varying views from one test to another. This technique is based on the presentation of stimuli that are partially revealed through Gaussian windows, the location of which is random and the number of which is established in such a way as to maintain an established performance criterion. Gradually, the experimental program uses participants’ performance to determine the stimulus regions that participants use to recognize objects. The synthetic objects used in this study are unfamiliar and were generated from a program produced at C. Edward Connor’s lab, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Results: The results were integrated across participants to establish regions of presented stimuli that determine the observers’ ability to recognize them—i.e., diagnostic attributes. The results will be reported in graphical form with a Z scores mapping that will be superimposed on silhouettes of the objects presented during the experiment. This mapping makes it possible to quantify the importance of the different regions on the visible surface of an object for its recognition by the participants.
Conclusions: The diagnostic attributes that have been identified are the best described in terms of surface fragments. Some of these fragments are located on or near the outer edge of the stimulus while others are relatively distant. The overlap is minimal between the effective attributes for the different points of view of the same object. This suggests that the traits underlying the recognition of objects are specific to the point of view. In other words, they do not generalize through the points of view.
Background: Saccades are rapid and abrupt eye movements that allow us to change the point of fixation very quickly. Saccades are generally made to visual points of interest, but we can also saccade to non-visual objects that attract our attention. While there is a plethora of studies investigating saccadic eye movements to visual targets, there is very little evidence of how eye movement planning occurs when individuals are performing eye movements to non-visual targets across different sensory modalities.
Methods: Fifteen adults with normal, or corrected to normal, vision made saccades to either visual, auditory, tactile or proprioceptive targets. In the auditory condition a speaker was positioned at one of eight locations along a circle surrounding a central fixation point. In the proprioceptive condition the participant’s finger was placed at one of the eight locations. In the tactile condition participants were touched on their right forearm in one of four eccentric location, left and right of a central point. Eye movements were made in complete darkness.
Results: We compared the precision and accuracy of the eye movements to tactile, proprioceptive, and auditory targets in the dark. Overall, both precision and accuracy of movements to non-visual targets were significantly lower compared to visual targets.
Conclusions: These differences emphasize the central role of the visual system in saccade planning.
Abstract: The bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) family of proteins has a multitude of roles throughout the body. It plays important roles in development and in the adult vascular endothelium, by modulating the angiogenic response. The endothelial-specific receptor BMP receptor Alk1 is of particular importance in the proper remodeling of the vasculature and its ligand BMP9 has been shown to be a potent inhibitor of neovascularization. Dysregulated BMP signaling has been linked to multiple vascular diseases and can lead to the abnormal angiogenesis. We therefore investigated the role of BMP9/Alk1 signaling in retinal angiogenesis, and its therapeutic implications for vascular pathologies of the eye.
