Presentation Information
[P2-03]Impaired Temporal Perception Following Sight Restoration After Congenital Cataracts
*Abel Mewleddeg Legu2, Gianluca Mariscano1, David Melcher1,4, Ehud Zohary2,3 (1. Department of Psychology, New York University Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), 2. Project Eyeopener (Ethiopia), 3. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), 4. Center for Brain and Health, New York University Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates))
Keywords:
Temporal integration,Causality perception,Two-flash fusion,Congenital cataracts,Sight restoration
Temporal integration is essential for understanding rapidly changing visual information, enabling us to perform visual functions such as motion perception and causal inference. While spatial aspects of visual recovery following sight restoration are well documented, far less is known about how temporal integration develops. Notably, individuals with a history of congenital cataracts often show reduced alpha activity, which has previously been linked to the resolution of temporal perception over short intervals (50- 100ms). We investigated temporal integration in 6 participants with congenital cataracts who had undergone cataract surgery, using both a two-flash fusion and a causality perception task. The first task involves judging between one or two flashes at varying inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs). Our results show that only one participant performed the task with a typical pattern, while the other 5 showed temporal integration thresholds that were over 3 times longer than what is typically reported in normally sighted individuals to see two distinct flashes. The second task involves judging whether one moving object caused the movement of another at varying temporal lags. While longer time lags typically result in reduced perception of causality, 5 out of 6 participants showed no systematic differences in causality perception at different time lags. Together, these findings suggest a potential critical window for the development of temporal integration mechanisms, with potential knock-on effects for higher-level temporal perception tasks like causality, and are consistent with previous electrophysiological studies showing reduced alpha activity for patients with bilateral congenital cataracts even following sight restoration.