Abstract
The extent of sensory eye dominance, a reflection of the interocular suppression in binocular visual processing, can be quantitatively measured using the binocular phase combination task. In this study, we aimed to provide a normative dataset for sensory eye dominance using this task. Based on that, we also assessed the relationship between perceptual eye dominance and stereopsis. One-hundred and forty-two adults (average age: 24.00 ± 1.74 years old) with normal or corrected to normal monocular visual acuity (logMAR < 0.00) participated. Observer’s sensory eye dominance was quantified in two complementary ways: the interocular contrast ratio when the two eyes were balanced (i.e., the balance point) and the absolute value of the binocular perceived phase when each eye viewed maximum contrast stimuli in binocular phase combination task. Stereo acuities were measured with maximum contrast stimuli using an identical spatial frequency (0.30 cycles/degree) and stimulus arrangement to that used in the eye dominance assessment. The averaged balance point was 0.93 ± 0.06 (Mean ± SD), the averaged absolute value of the binocular perceived phase when both eyes viewed maximum contrast stimuli was 7.62 ± 5.91°, and the averaged stereo acuity was 2.19 ± 0.34 log arc seconds. Neither of these two sensory eye dominance measures were significantly correlated with stereo acuity (Balance point: ρ = 0.14, P = 0.10; Phase: ρ = −0.13, P = 0.13). The sensory eye dominance, as reflected using a phase combination task, and stereopsis are not significantly correlated in the normal-sighted population at low spatial frequencies.
Highlights
Information from our two eyes does not necessarily have equal weighting at the level where they are combined in the visual cortex
We show that the averaged sensory eye dominance was 0.93, which was close to unity; neither the balance point (ρ = 0.14, P = 0.10) nor the absolute value of the perceived phase when the two eyes viewed maximum contrast stimuli (ρ = −0.13, P = 0.13) was significantly correlated with stereo acuity
Our results further support a recent report from Wu et al (2018), who found no correlation between sensory eye dominance as measured with the continuous flashing technique and stereopsis as measured with random dots on the same CRT monitor used for ocular dominance test
Summary
Information from our two eyes does not necessarily have equal weighting at the level where they are combined in the visual cortex. Several laboratory-based techniques have been developed to quantitatively measure the sensory eye dominance of different individuals, these include the binocular rivalry task using gratings (Ooi and He, 2001; Handa et al, 2004, 2006, 2012), letters (Kwon et al, 2015) or noise patterns (Yang et al, 2010), the binocular phase combination task (Ding and Sperling, 2006; Huang et al, 2009), the dichoptically presented global motion coherence task (Hess et al, 2007), the dichoptically presented global orientation coherence task (Zhou et al, 2013a) and the binocular orientation combination task (Yehezkel et al, 2016). It has been demonstrated that abnormal sensory eye dominance occurs in patients with amblyopia (Huang et al, 2009; Ding et al, 2013), strabismus (Kwon et al, 2014), anisometropia (Zhou et al, 2016), surgically-corrected intermittent exotropes (Feng et al, 2015), surgically-corrected strabismic patients (Zhou et al, 2017), treated amblyopes (Chen et al, 2017; Zhao et al, 2017) and LASIK-corrected anisometropes (Feng et al, 2017)
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