Short-term monocular pattern deprivation reduces the internal additive noise of the visual system

Jinwei Li; Zhenhui Cheng; Jing Li; Linghe Li; Lijun Chen; Jiayu Tao; Zeng Wang; Di Wu; Pan Zhang

doi:10.3389/fnins.2023.1155034

Short-term monocular pattern deprivation reduces the internal additive noise of the visual system

Front Neurosci. 2023 Jul 27:17:1155034. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1155034. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Jinwei Li¹, Zhenhui Cheng¹, Jing Li¹, Linghe Li¹, Lijun Chen², Jiayu Tao³, Zeng Wang⁴, Di Wu⁵, Pan Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang, China.
² Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China.
³ Department of Psychology, Chengde Medical University, Chengde, China.
⁴ Department of Psychology, Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, China.
⁵ Military Medical Psychology School, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China.

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that short-term monocular pattern deprivation can shift perceptual dominance in favor of the deprived eye. However, little is known about the effect of monocular pattern deprivation on contrast sensitivity (CS) and its corresponding mechanisms. Here, contrast sensitivity function (CSF) in the nondominant eye of normal subjects was evaluated before and after 150 min of monocular pattern deprivation. To obtain a CSF with high precision and efficiency before deprivation effect washout, a quick CSF (qCSF) method was used to assess CS over a wide range of spatial frequencies and at two external noise levels. We found that (1) monocular pattern deprivation effectively improved the CS of the deprived eye with larger effect on high spatial frequencies, (2) CS improvement only occurred when external noise was absent and its amount was spatial frequency dependent, and (3) a perceptual template model (PTM) revealed that decreased internal additive noise accounted for the mechanism of the monocular pattern derivation effect. These findings help us better understand the features of short-term monocular pattern deprivation and shed light on the treatment of amblyopia.

Keywords: contrast sensitivity; external noise; internal additive noise; monocular pattern deprivation; perceptual template model; spatial frequency.