Decline of Orientation and Direction Sensitivity in the Aging Population

Frontiers in Neuroscience

Lixia Feng¹  Sha Luo¹  Lin Xia¹  Jiong Dong¹  He Chen³ 

[1] Anhui Branch of National Clinical Research Center for Ocular Diseases, Hefei, China;Department of Ophthalmology, First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China;Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China;

关键词: vision;    orientation;    motion direction;    aging;    perception deficits;    psychometric function;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnins.2021.643414

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

While the aging population is growing, our knowledge regarding age-related deterioration of visual perception remains limited. In the present study, we investigated the effects of aging on orientation and direction sensitivity in a healthy population using a weighted up–down adaptive method to improve the efficiency and reliability of the task. A total of 57 healthy participants aged 22–72 years were included and divided into old and young groups. Raw experimental data were processed using a psychometric method to determine the differences between the two groups. In the orientation task, the threshold of the discrimination angle and bias (i.e., the difference between the perceived midpoint from the logistic function and the reference point) was increased, while the lapsing rate (i.e., 1—the maximum logistic function) did not significantly change in the old group compared with the young group. In the motion direction task, the threshold, bias, and lapsing rate were significantly increased in the old group compared with the young group. These results suggest that the decreased ability of old participants in discrimination of stimulus orientation and motion direction could be related to the impaired function of visual cortex.

【 授权许可】

Unknown