Attentional cues potentiate full recovery of fine motion discrimination in cortical blindness

摘要

Visual perceptual training in cortically blind (CB) fields recovers performance on the trained tasks. However, regardless of training type, contrast sensitivity and fine discrimination thresholds remain abnormal in CB fields. Here, we asked whether training on fine direction discrimination (FDD) with endogenous, feature-based attention (FBA) cues can recover normal FDD thresholds in CB fields. Seven CB subjects previously trained on coarse direction discrimination were newly trained on FDD with valid FBA cues. Following such training, FDD thresholds reached 5?3 deg, not significantly different from thresholds in the intact field of vision (3?1 deg). With neutral cues, FDD thresholds at trained blind field locations averaged 10?0.4 deg, significantly worse than in the intact field of vision (5?1 deg). In sum, we now show that training with FBA cues can recover normal, fine direction discrimination performance in chronic CB subjects. Current work is assessing robustness and generalizability of this phenomenon.