Visual deficits in stroke patients: the back of the brain.
Recent psychophysical and neuroimaging studies provide a computational description of how object recognition is achieved from low-level features detection, through mid-level integration, to high-level object category representation. These discoveries provide essential tools to address the acquired object recognition deficits in patients.
In this project we design a set of tasks based on what is known from the psychophysical literature to evaluate the perceptual chain from low- to high-level processing. Based on previous studies of this research group a series of experiments are designed to address: visual field, visual acuity, saccade execution and exploratory eye-movements, feature integration, visual span, contextual effects and visuo-spatial attention.
These tasks enable to evaluate the interaction between task demand, impaired visual field and perceptual integration processes in patients. The preliminary data obtained will have important implications for designing a new screening battery to assess visual disabilities. We foresee that the results will prove useful in defining ad-hoc rehabilitation protocols for stroke and posterior cortical atrophy patients, taking into account the specific functions involved in the task.