Elsevier

Vision Research

Volume 32, Issue 6, June 1992, Pages 1115-1124
Vision Research

Visual remapping in infantile nystagmus

https://doi.org/10.1016/0042-6989(92)90011-7Get rights and content

Abstract

The possibility that patients with idiopathic infantile nystagmus achieve spatial constancy by visual remapping was investigated by comparing subjective localization of flashed test targets to their absolute position in space and to their absolute position on the retina. Nystagmats first viewed a screen-stationary reference target that was followed by a test flash. A computer used eye movement feedback to precisely control the test flash position on the retina. All six nystagmats detected test flashes throughout their nystagmus cycle. For three nystagmats test flashes (totalN = 48) were delivered to the same retinal locus that were, at different times, to the right and left of the reference target. More than two-thirds of such crossover stimuli were correctly located in space: when only those stimuli at least 0.5 deg from the reference were considered, two of three subjects correctly located all stimuli. Taken together these results argue that our subjects could see throughout the nystagmus cycle and shifted their visual map in synchrony with their nystagmus as an explicit means of avoiding oscillopsia.

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    Intriguingly, the potential for stable percepts remains in early onset cases. These patients are capable of perceptual adaptation despite dramatic retinal image motion resulting from eye movements that are quite visible to another observer (Goldstein et al., 1992; Bedell 2000). This perceptual stability is attributed to the subtraction of eye movement signals from the incoming visual information, the corollary discharge or efference copy discussed above.

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    The first is the “sampling theory”, by which the information from the most stable retinal images during the foveation periods can be used to establish a stable image, whereas the rest of the nystagmus cycle is ignored.12 The second hypothesis is the “remapping theory” whereby an efference copy signal of the nystagmus waveform is used to cancel the effects of motion.13 This is probably the most likely theory because vision during the fast phases of the nystagmus cycle has been documented which argues against sampling.

  • Nystagmus and saccadic intrusions

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    In pendular waveforms, the oscillation is “flattened” by a foveation period when the eye is closest to the target (see Fig. 13.18A). Foveation periods are one important reason why many patients with INS have near-normal vision (Sheth et al., 1995; Chung and Bedell, 1997), and why most do not complain of oscillopsia, despite continuous movement of their eyes otherwise (Goldstein et al., 1992; Dell'Osso et al., 1997; Abadi et al., 1999; Ukwade and Bedell, 1999). Foveation periods are not an invariable finding in INS, however, and when they are absent or poorly developed, visual acuity is usually impaired (Dell'Osso and Leigh, 1992; Bedell and Bollenbacher, 1996).

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