Visual Integration Property And Plasticity Of Binocular Vision In Schizophrenia

This study explores the characteristics of visual integration and binocular visual plasticity,employing surround suppression and monocular deprivation as research methods.Perceptual suppression of the visual environment surrounding a visual target stimulus is referred to as surround suppression.Surround suppression is a large-scale visual integration phenomenon that occurs in various stages of visual processing,including contrast surround suppression,which results in a reduction in the subjective contrast of a central stimulus surrounded by peripheral stimuli.Additionally,there is motion surround suppression,where people have more difficulty judging the direction of motion of large stimuli compared to small stimuli,indicating weaker perception of large stimuli’s motion.Short-term monocular deprivation of an individual can induce a stronger deprived eye,as seen in binocular integration and binocular competition tasks where the deprived eye has a greater advantage.Short-term monocular deprivation reflects a short-term steady-state plasticity of the brain’s visual system.Individuals with schizophrenia exhibit negative,positive,and cognitive symptoms,with many involving visual perceptual deficits,including impairments in motion perception.Damage to the motion visual area in schizophrenic patients can lead to abnormal integration of visual motion information across a large range.Furthermore,patients lack appropriate responses to changes in the external environment,which may indicate abnormalities in their visual neural plasticity.This study investigates two questions using psychophysical methods:(1)Are there abnormalities in motion surround suppression intensity in individuals with schizophrenia?By investigating this question,we will further reveal the characteristics of visual information integration in schizophrenia patients;(2)Are there abnormalities in the short-term monocular deprivation effect in individuals with schizophrenia? The results of this study will explore the characteristics of monocular deprivation in schizophrenia patients and further reveal possible abnormalities in their visual steady-state plasticity.The first study found that motion surround suppression was weaker in individuals with schizophrenia than in normal individuals.Since surround suppression has the ability to separate graphic backgrounds,this suggests that schizophrenic patients’ abnormal visual ability may originate from abnormal basic visual suppression phenomena.The second study found that the deprived eye’s dominance after short-term monocular deprivation was not as enhanced in individuals with schizophrenia as it was in normal individuals,indicating weaker visual plasticity in schizophrenic patients.Schizophrenic patients’ weakened motion surround suppression and poor visual neural plasticity can affect their perception of the external environment’s accuracy and may be one of the neurophysiological mechanisms that cause their perceptual abnormalities.This study,using psychophysical methods,found that motion surround suppression in schizophrenia patients was weaker than in normal individuals,possibly due to a decrease in the GABA neurotransmitter in schizophrenia,leading to impaired inhibitory cognitive processes.The deprived eye’s weaker dominance after short-term monocular deprivation in schizophrenia patients suggests poorer visual neural plasticity.In the future,these paradigms can be used as a tool for non-invasive detection of schizophrenia patients.