Gender difference in the relationships between vision and hearing impairments and negative well-being.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the association of hearing impairment, vision impairment and their combination (dual sensory impairment) with negative well-being such as depression, subjective poor health and the reduced functional ability in community-dwelling older adults, and to determine whether any association varies by gender. METHODS: Between 2005 and 2006, we objectively examined vision and hearing impairment (using best-corrected visual acuity and pure-tone audiometric test) in 843 people aged 65 years and older (351 males, 492 females) in a rural Japanese town. Through a home visit interview survey using a structured questionnaire, we also collected information on depression (the five-item Geriatric Depression Scale), subjective poor health, and reduced functional activity (the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology's Index of Competence). RESULTS: We observed gender differences in the association between sensory impairment and depression. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that hearing impairment in males (adjusted odds ratio: 2.22, 95% confidence interval; 1.07-4.61) and vision impairment in females (1.91, 1.14-3.21) were related to depression. Vision impairment and dual sensory impairment were also associated with subjective poor health and reduced functional activity in both sexes. CONCLUSIONS: Sensory impairment is significantly associated with negative well-being in older persons, and its association with depression may differ between males and females

The contribution of visual information to human brake behaviour

In this study the contribution of visual information to the onset and control of braking in front of a stationary target vehicle was investigated. In a first experiment, participants drove a go-cart along a linear track towards a stationary vehicle, in monocular and binocular conditions. They could start braking from a distance of 4, 7, or 10 metres from the vehicle. In a second experiment, the same braking task was executed under three visual conditions: normal vision, central vision and central vision with restricted peripheral vision. No significant differences between monocular and binocular vision were reported, whereas the restriction of peripheral vision was associated with more reserved brake behaviour. The results are discussed with respect to the functional significance of visual information during braking and related to the theoretical discussion on the exact nature of the information used

Psychohygienic Aspects Of Training Of Disabled Adolescents With Pathology Of The Vision

The objective of this article is to undertake a literature review to familiarize ourselves with the knowledge base; to summarize information about some psycho-hygienic aspects of teaching and visually impaired adolescents, including features of communication, learning environment, psycho-emotional stress in specialized educational institutions, as well as individual psychological characteristics of personality, emotional and volitional state of visually impaired and general patterns of physiological and psychological characteristics and health of adolescents with vision pathology. To examine the system of security measures in order to optimize the learning environment for the promotion of mental health of the studied contingent and the nature and impact of the learning environment on functional status and health of adolescents with vision pathology. To investigate the impact of current patterns of complex sanitary and regime-organizational factors of training on functional status and health of adolescents with vision pathology. A thorough literature review helps to lay the foundation for a study, and can inspires new research ideas

Visual pathways from the perspective of cost functions and multi-task deep neural networks

Vision research has been shaped by the seminal insight that we can understand the higher-tier visual cortex from the perspective of multiple functional pathways with different goals. In this paper, we try to give a computational account of the functional organization of this system by reasoning from the perspective of multi-task deep neural networks. Machine learning has shown that tasks become easier to solve when they are decomposed into subtasks with their own cost function. We hypothesize that the visual system optimizes multiple cost functions of unrelated tasks and this causes the emergence of a ventral pathway dedicated to vision for perception, and a dorsal pathway dedicated to vision for action. To evaluate the functional organization in multi-task deep neural networks, we propose a method that measures the contribution of a unit towards each task, applying it to two networks that have been trained on either two related or two unrelated tasks, using an identical stimulus set. Results show that the network trained on the unrelated tasks shows a decreasing degree of feature representation sharing towards higher-tier layers while the network trained on related tasks uniformly shows high degree of sharing. We conjecture that the method we propose can be used to analyze the anatomical and functional organization of the visual system and beyond. We predict that the degree to which tasks are related is a good descriptor of the degree to which they share downstream cortical-units.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Functional Outcomes of the Low Vision Depression Prevention Trial in Age-Related Macular Degeneration.

Purpose: To compare the efficacy of behavioral activation (BA) plus low vision rehabilitation with an occupational therapist (OT-LVR) with supportive therapy (ST) on visual function in patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Methods: Single-masked, attention-controlled, randomized clinical trial with AMD patients with subsyndromal depressive symptoms (n = 188). All subjects had two outpatient low vision rehabilitation optometry visits, then were randomized to in-home BA + OT-LVR or ST. Behavioral activation is a structured behavioral treatment aiming to increase adaptive behaviors and achieve valued goals. Supportive therapy is a nondirective, psychological treatment that provides emotional support and controls for attention. Functional vision was assessed with the activity inventory (AI) in which participants rate the difficulty level of goals and corresponding tasks. Participants were assessed at baseline and 4 months. Results: Improvements in functional vision measures were seen in both the BA + OT-LVR and ST groups at the goal level (d = 0.71; d = 0.56 respectively). At the task level, BA + OT-LVR patients showed more improvement in reading, inside-the-home tasks and outside-the-home tasks, when compared to ST patients. The greatest effects were seen in the BA + OT-LVR group in subjects with a visual acuity ≥20/70 (d = 0.360 reading; d = 0.500 inside the home; d = 0.468 outside the home). Conclusions: Based on the trends of the AI data, we suggest that BA + OT-LVR services, provided by an OT in the patient\u27s home following conventional low vision optometry services, are more effective than conventional optometric low vision services alone for those with mild visual impairment. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00769015.)

Monovision techniques for telerobots

The primary task of the vision sensor in a telerobotic system is to provide information about the position of the system's effector relative to objects of interest in its environment. The subtasks required to perform the primary task include image segmentation, object recognition, and object location and orientation in some coordinate system. The accomplishment of the vision task requires the appropriate processing tools and the system methodology to effectively apply the tools to the subtasks. The functional structure of the telerobotic vision system used in the Langley Research Center's Intelligent Systems Research Laboratory is discussed as well as two monovision techniques for accomplishing the vision subtasks

Hospital admissions in older people with visual impairment in Britain.

BACKGROUND: We aimed to assess the risk of hospital admission associated with visual impairment in a representative sample of older people living in the community in Britain. METHODS: DESIGN: Prospective study of hospital admission in a population-based sample of community dwelling people aged 75 years and above in Britain. SETTING: 53 general practices. PARTICIPANTS: 14,394 participants in the MRC Trial of Assessment and Management of Older people in the Community. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Hospital admission. RESULTS: Visually impaired older people had 238.7 admissions/1000 person-years compared to 169.7 admissions/1000 person-years in people with good vision: age and sex adjusted rate ratio (RR) 1.32 (95% CI 1.19 to 1.47). Adjusting for a wide range of potential explanatory factors largely eliminated this association: RR 1.06 (95% CI 0.94 to 1.20). However, adjusting for a more limited range of confounding factors, excluding those factors possibly a consequence of reduced vision, left a modest increased risk: RR 1.19 (95% CI 1.06 to 1.34). CONCLUSION: The association between visual impairment and rate of hospital admission can be attributed to higher levels of co-morbidity and reduced functional ability among people with reduced vision. Visual impairment is likely to be an important contributor to reduced functional ability, but other factors may also be involved

The impact of early and late literacy on the functional connectivity of vision and

Introduction: Learning to read leads to functional and structural changes in the cortical regions related to vision and language. The visual word-form area (VWFA) is though to play a key role in the interaction between these two systems (Dehaene et al. 2015). For instance, the VWFA is activated not only from bottom-up during reading but also in a top-down manner during speech listening without visual stimulation (Dehaene et al. 2010). The objective of this study was twofolded: how literacy acquisition affects four intrinsic functional connectivity networks related to vision and language (a dorsal language [DLN], a bilateral auditory [AN], a low-level [LLVN] and a high-level visual [HLVN] networks); and to explore the role of the VWFA as an interface between high-level vision and language functions. Methods: Independent component analysis (ICA) was applied to functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 40 adult participants with variable levels of literacy (illiterate, late literate and early literate). The four functional connectivity networks were compared across groups using dual-regression (Filippini et al. 2009). In addition, we directly explored the functional connectivity between the VWFA and each of the studied networks. Finally, the strengh of connectivity between the VWFA and each network was compared across groups and correlated with individual reading fluency scores. Results: ICA produced 40 networks, and spatial crosscorrelation was used to identify the four networks of interest. Literacy was positively correlated with increased connectivity within the four networks. A major difference separating early literate from illiterate and late literate subjects was found. The connectivity between the VWFA and the DLN increased with literacy. Conversely, the strength of connectivity between the VWFA and the HLVN correlated negatively with literacy. Finally, , the HLVN-VWFA connectivity was negatively correlated with reading scores while the connectivity between the DLN-VWFA was positively correlated with reading scores. Discussion:Literacy has a strong influence on the visual and language functional networks. Literacy modifies the VWFA connectivity, by making it functionally closer to the language system, and more distinct from other associative visual areas that do not contribute to the reading process. The current results suggest that early acquisition of literacy plays a critical role for the tuning of the functional brain architecture. References: -Dehaene S et al. Nat Rev Neurosci.(2015)16:234 244 -Dehaene S et al. Science.(2010)330:1359–1364 -Filippini N et al. PNAS.(2009)106, 7209–7214Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Trail Making Test performance contributes to subjective judgment of visual efficiency in older adults

Introduction: The determinant factors that influence self-reported quality of vision have yet to be fully elucidated. This study evaluated a range of contextual information, established psychophysical tests, and in particular, a series of cognitive tests as potentially novel determinant factors.   Materials & Methods: Community dwelling adults (aged 50+) recruited to Wave 1 of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, excluding those registered blind, participated in this study (N = 5,021). Self-reports of vision were analysed in relation to visual acuity and contrast sensitivity, ocular pathology, visual (Choice Response Time task; Trail Making Test) and global cognition. Contextual factors such as having visited an optometrist and wearing glasses were also considered. Ordinal logistic regression was used to determine univariate and multivariate associations.   Results and Discussion: Poor Trail Making Test performance (Odds ratio, OR = 1.36), visual acuity (OR = 1.72) and ocular pathology (OR = 2.25) were determinant factors for poor versus excellent vision in self-reports. Education, wealth, age, depressive symptoms and general cognitive fitness also contributed to determining self-reported vision.   Conclusions: Trail Making Test contribution to self-reports may capture higher level visual processing and should be considered when using self-reports to assess vision and its role in cognitive and functional health

Orientation Information in Encoding Facial Expressions for People With Central Vision Loss.

Purpose:Patients with central vision loss face daily challenges on performing various visual tasks. Categorizing facial expressions is one of the essential daily activities. The knowledge of what visual information is crucial for facial expression categorization is important to the understanding of the functional performance of these patients. Here we asked how the performance for categorizing facial expressions depends on the spatial information along different orientations for patients with central vision loss. Methods:Eight observers with central vision loss and five age-matched normally sighted observers categorized face images into four expressions: angry, fearful, happy, and sad. An orientation filter (bandwidth = 23°) was applied to restrict the spatial information within the face images, with the center of the filter ranged from horizontal (0°) to 150° in steps of 30°. Face images without filtering were also tested. Results:When the stimulus visibility was matched, observers with central vision loss categorized facial expressions just as well as their normally sighted counterparts, and showed similar confusion and bias patterns. For all four expressions, performance (normalized d'), uncorrelated with any of the observers' visual characteristics, peaked between -30° and 30° filter orientations and declined systematically as the filter orientation approached vertical (90°). Like normally sighted observers, observers with central vision loss also relied mainly on mouth and eye regions to categorize facial expressions. Conclusions:Similar to people with normal vision, people with central vision loss rely primarily on the spatial information around the horizontal orientation, in particular the regions around the mouth and eyes, for recognizing facial expressions