Visual learning and attention guidance in patients with macular degeneration

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In the first project period, we have investigated the impact of foveal vision loss on visual memory and memory-guided visual search. We found that both are deficient after foveal vision loss, but only as long as the visual exploration of the environment with eye movements is impaired. Especially in the early phase of foveal vision loss (or with simulated foveal vision loss in normal-sighted observers), exploration suffers from the fact that the fovea is the reference point for saccade planning. This means that saccades bring peripheral stimuli right into the scotomatous area, making corrective saccades necessary. This changes the normally effortless exploration of the environment into a very much top-down controlled task. Consequently, we now propose to develop an efficient saccadic rereferencing training to a retinal location outside the scotoma. We then want to test if normalization of gaze exploration goes along with improvements of memory-guided search in the presence of foveal vision loss.