Effects of Biological Maturation and Visual Experience on Human Visual Developmen

生物成熟和视觉体验对人类视觉发育的影响

• 批准号: 7507212
• 负责人: RAIN G BOSWORTH
• 金额: $ 38.63万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-09-30 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7507212
• 关键词: Accounting; Address; Adult; Affect; Age; Animals; Anisometropia; Area; Biological; Birth; Brain; Cataract; Child; Conceptions; Contrast Sensitivity; Data; Development; Discrimination; Dizygotic Twins; Environment; Equilibrium; Eye; Eye Abnormalities; Genes; Genetic; Human; Infant; Influentials; Laboratories; Learning; Measures; Mediating; Metric; Modeling; Motion; Nature; Parents; Pathway interactions; Population; Premature Infant; Process; Psychophysiology; Public Health; Rate; Refractive Errors; Relative (related person); Shapes; Stimulus; Strabismus; Techniques; Testing; Thinking; Twin Multiple Birth; Ursidae Family; Vision Disorders; Vision research; Visual; Visual Cortex; Weight; congenital cataract; design; detector; developmental neurobiology; early experience; experience; factor A; koniocellular; luminance; magnocellular; neurophysiology; parvocellular; postnatal; programs; retinogeniculate; vision development; visual performance; visual process; visual processing

Description (provided by applicant): The degree to which visual development is governed by "nature" vs. "nurture" has been a long-standing topic in vision research. Although much has been learned from animal studies in the last 50 years, relatively little is known about the factors influencing visual development in humans. The current proposal investigates whether factors related to visual experience ("nurture") vs. preprogrammed biological maturation ("nature"), or both, are important in shaping visual development. To this end, we propose visual psychophysical studies with four different subject populations that tease apart these factors. (A) Fullterm Infants and (B) Healthy Preterm Infants. If early visual experience is the dominant force in visual development, preterm infants should show the same developmental trajectories as fullterm infants when plotted in terms of postnatal age (i.e. age since birth). By contrast, if biological maturation is more influential, preterm infants should match fullterm babies when plotted in postconceptional age (i.e., age since conception). (C) Monozygotic vs. Dizygotic Twins. While both twin types share the same environment and parents, they differ in the degree of shared genetic makeup. We apply a biometrical twin model that can identify the proportion of "phenotypic" variance in visual performance that can be accounted for by shared environment versus genes. (D) Infants and Children with Early Abnormal Visual Input. Comparisons made between this group (cataract, strabismus, and anisometropia) and healthy controls will address the vulnerability of various aspects of visual processing to abnormal visual experience early in development. Three aims address different levels of visual processing: 1) Subcortical Pathway Processing: We ask if the three main retinogeniculate pathways, Magnocellular (M), Parvocellular (P) and Koniocellular (K), are equally or differentially affected by visual experience, by obtaining contrast sensitivities for luminance, red/green and blue/yellow stimuli, thought to be mediated by these pathways, respectively. 2) Subcortical Input to Cortical Motion Processing: We will obtain an estimate of the extent of P vs. M subcortical pathway input to motion processing using a "Motion/Detection" threshold ratio paradigm that measures the relative effects of chromatic (P pathway) vs. luminance (M pathway) contrast on motion processing. Previous results from our laboratory suggest that the relative P vs. M input to motion decreases with age, and here we will ask whether this re-weighting process is influenced more by visual experience or biological maturation. 3) Cortical Motion Processing: We will assess global motion processing, which is believed to be a higher-level cortical function. Unlike many previous studies, our global motion stimuli will be scaled to detectability for each subject, such that differences observed across ages/subject groups can be more definitively interpreted. The results of these projects, which will reveal what aspects of visual development are more vs. less amenable to effects of visual experience, may have important implications for treating children with congenital eye disorders. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE The degree to which visual development is governed by "nature" (i.e., pre-programmed biological maturation) vs. "nurture" (i.e., visual experience) has been a long-standing topic in vision research. The current proposal investigates this question by conducting infant visual psychophysical studies in subject populations that bear relevance: preterm infants, twin infants and infants born with congenital eye disorders. The results of these studies, which we hope will reveal what aspects of visual development are more vs. less amenable to effects of visual experience, may have important implications for treating children with visual disorders.

描述（由申请人提供）：视觉发育在多大程度上受“先天”与“后天”的影响一直是视觉研究的一个长期话题。尽管在过去的50年里，人们从动物研究中学到了很多东西，但对影响人类视觉发育的因素知之甚少。目前的建议调查是否与视觉经验（“培育”）与预编程的生物成熟（“性质”），或两者相关的因素，在塑造视觉发展的重要性。为此，我们提出了视觉心理物理学研究与四个不同的主题人群，梳理除了这些因素。(A)足月婴儿和（B）健康早产婴儿。如果早期视觉经验是视觉发育的主导力量，那么早产儿在出生后年龄（即自出生以来的年龄）方面应显示出与足月婴儿相同的发育轨迹。相比之下，如果生物成熟更具影响力，则早产儿在受孕后年龄（即，自怀孕以来）。(C)同卵双胞胎与异卵双胞胎。虽然这两种类型的双胞胎共享相同的环境和父母，但他们在共享基因组成的程度上有所不同。我们应用一个生物统计学双胞胎模型，可以确定的比例“表型”的视觉表现的差异，可以占共享的环境与基因。(D)早期异常视觉输入的婴儿和儿童。这组（白内障，斜视，屈光参差）和健康对照组之间的比较将解决视觉处理的各个方面的脆弱性，在发展早期异常的视觉体验。三个目标针对不同水平的视觉处理：1）皮层下通路处理：我们询问三个主要的视网膜神经通路，大细胞（M），小细胞（P）和Koniocellular（K），是否同样或不同地受到视觉体验的影响，通过获得亮度，红/绿色和蓝/黄色刺激的对比敏感度，认为这些通路分别介导。2)皮层下输入到皮层运动处理：我们将使用“运动/检测”阈值比率范例来获得对P与M皮层下通路输入到运动处理的程度的估计，该范例测量色度（P通路）与亮度（M通路）对比度对运动处理的相对影响。我们实验室以前的结果表明，运动的相对P与M输入随着年龄的增长而减少，在这里，我们将询问这种重新加权过程是否更多地受到视觉经验或生物成熟的影响。3)皮质运动处理：我们将评估整体运动处理，这被认为是一个更高层次的皮质功能。与许多以前的研究不同，我们的全局运动刺激将被缩放到每个受试者的可检测性，这样可以更明确地解释不同年龄/受试者组之间观察到的差异。这些项目的结果将揭示视觉发育的哪些方面更容易受到视觉体验的影响，可能对治疗先天性眼病儿童具有重要意义。公共卫生相关性视觉发育受“自然”支配的程度（即，预编程的生物成熟）与“养育”（即，视觉体验）一直是视觉研究中的一个长期课题。目前的建议调查这个问题，进行婴儿视觉心理物理学研究的受试人群承担相关性：早产儿，双胞胎婴儿和婴儿出生先天性眼病。这些研究的结果，我们希望能揭示视觉发育的哪些方面更容易受到视觉体验的影响，可能对治疗视觉障碍儿童具有重要意义。