Perceptual learning has been shown to produce an improvement of visual acuity (VA) and contrast sensitivity (CS) both in subjects with amblyopia and refractive defects such as myopia or presbyopia. Transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) has proven to be efficacious in accelerating neural plasticity and boosting perceptual learning in healthy participants. In this study we investigated whether a short behavioural training regime using a contrast detection task combined with online tRNS was as effective in improving visual functions in participants with mild myopia compared to a two-month behavioural training regime without tRNS (Camilleri et al., 2014). After two weeks of perceptual training in combination with tRNS, participants showed an improvement of 0.15 LogMAR in uncorrected VA (UCVA) that was comparable with that obtained after eight weeks of training with no tRNS, and an improvement in uncorrected CS (UCCS) at various spatial frequencies (whereas no UCCS improvement was seen after eight weeks of training with no tRNS). On the other hand, a control group that trained for two weeks without stimulation did not show any significant UCVA or UCCS improvement. These results suggest that the combination of behavioural and neuromodulatory techniques can be fast and efficacious in improving sight in individuals with mild myopia.

Visual crowding is the inability to discriminate objects when presented with nearby flankers and sets a fundamental limit for conscious perception. Beta oscillations in the parietal cortex were found to be associated to crowding, with higher beta amplitude related to better crowding resilience. An open question is whether beta activity directly and selectively modulates crowding. We employed Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS) in the beta band (18-Hz), in the alpha band (10-Hz) or in a sham regime, asking whether 18-Hz tACS would selectively improve the perception of crowded stimuli by increasing parietal beta activity. Resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) was measured before and after stimulation to test the influence of tACS on endogenous oscillations. Consistently with our predictions, we found that 18-Hz tACS, as compared to 10-Hz tACS and sham stimulation, reduced crowding. This improvement was found specifically in the contralateral visual hemifield and was accompanied by an increased amplitude of EEG beta oscillations, confirming an effect on endogenous brain rhythms. These results support a causal relationship between parietal beta oscillations and visual crowding and provide new insights into the precise oscillatory mechanisms involved in human vision.

Background: Macular Degeneration (MD), a visual disease that produces central vision loss, is one of the main causes of visual disability in western countries. Patients with MD are forced to use a peripheral retinal locus (PRL) as a substitute of the

Background: Amblyopic observers present abnormal spatial interactions between a low-contrast sinusoidal target and high-contrast collinear flankers. It has been demonstrated that perceptual learning (PL) can modulate these low-level lateral interactions, resulting in improved visual acuity and contrast sensitivity. Objective: We measured the extent and duration of generalization effects to various spatial tasks (i.e., visual acuity, Vernier acuity, and foveal crowding) through PL on the target’s contrast detection. Methods: Amblyopic observers were trained on a contrast-detection task for a central target (i.e., a Gabor patch) flanked above and below by two high-contrast Gabor patches. The pre- and post-learning tasks included lateral interactions at different target-to-flankers separations (i.e., 2, 3, 4, 8 λ) and included a range of spatial frequencies and stimulus durations as well as visual acuity, Vernier acuity, contrast-sensitivity function, and foveal crowding. Results: The results showed that perceptual training reduced the target’s contrast-detection thresholds more for the longest target-to-flanker separation (i.e., 8 λ). We also found generalization of PL to different stimuli and tasks: contrast sensitivity for both trained and untrained spatial frequencies, visual acuity for Sloan letters, and foveal crowding, and partially for Vernier acuity. Follow-ups after 5–7 months showed not only complete maintenance of PL effects on visual acuity and contrast sensitivity function but also further improvement in these tasks. Conclusion: These results suggest that PL improves facilitatory lateral interactions in amblyopic observers, which usually extend over larger separations than in typical foveal vision. The improvement in these basic visual spatial operations leads to a more efficient capability of performing spatial tasks involving high levels of visual processing, possibly due to the refinement of bottom-up and top-down networks of visual areas.