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Second-order visual sensitivity in the aging population

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Abstract

Most visual and cognitive functions are affected by aging over the lifespan. In this study, our aim was to investigate the loss in sensitivity to different classes of second-order stimuli—a class of stimuli supposed to be mainly processed in extrastriate cortex—in the aging population. These stimuli will then allow one to identify specific cortical deficit independently of visibility losses in upstream parts of the visual pathway. For this purpose, we measured the sensitivity to first-order stimuli and second-order stimuli: orientation-modulated, motion-modulated or contrast-modulated as a function of spatial frequency in 50 aged participants. Overall, we observed a sensitivity loss for all classes of stimuli, but this loss differentially affects the three classes of second-order stimuli tested. It involves all modulation spatial frequencies in the case of motion modulation, but just high modulation spatial frequencies in the case of contrast- and orientation modulations. These observations imply that aging selectively affects the sensitivity to second-order stimuli depending on their type. Since there is evidence that these different second-order stimuli are processed in different regions of extrastriate cortex, this result may suggest that some visual cortical areas are more susceptible to aging effects than others.

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Fig. 1

Picture Alexandre Reynaud, wikimedia commons/CC-0

Fig. 2

Adapted from Reynaud et al. [33]

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China Grants (NSFC 31300913) to YT and (NSFC 81261120562) to YZ and by Canadian Institutes of Health Research Grants CCI-125686 and MT-10818 to RFH.

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Author notes

  1. Alexandre Reynaud and Yong Tang contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. McGill Vision Research, Department Ophthalmology, McGill University, Montreal, PQ, Canada

    Alexandre Reynaud & Robert F. Hess

  2. CAS Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Diseases, School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, People’s Republic of China

    Yong Tang & Yifeng Zhou

  3. State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Yifeng Zhou

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  1. Alexandre Reynaud
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Correspondence to Alexandre Reynaud.

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Statement of human and animal rights

This research has been approved by the ethics committee of the University of Science and Technology of China, and by the Ethics Review Board of the Montreal Neurological Institute. It was performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki.

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40520_2018_1018_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Supplementary material 1 Figure A1. Individual sensitivity functions of the 50 participants. The sensitivity functions are shown for the first-order oriented carrier (light blue, LM1d), the first-order moving carrier (light red, LM2d), the contrast modulation (green, CM), the orientation modulation (dark blue, OM), and the motion modulation (dark red, MM). Sensitivity functions are colored with light shades for the dominant eye (DE) and dark shades for the non-dominant eye (NDE) (PDF 937 KB)

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Reynaud, A., Tang, Y., Zhou, Y. et al. Second-order visual sensitivity in the aging population. Aging Clin Exp Res 31, 705–716 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-018-1018-6

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