Abstract
Amblyopia is a neurodevelopmental visual disorder arising from decorrelated binocular experience during the critical periods of development. The hallmark of amblyopia is reduced visual acuity and impairment in binocular vision. The consequences of amblyopia on various sensory and perceptual functions have been studied extensively over the past 50 years. Historically, relatively fewer studies examined the impact of amblyopia on visuomotor behaviours; however, research in this area has flourished over the past 10 years. Therefore, the aim of this review paper is to provide a comprehensive review of current knowledge about the effects of amblyopia on eye movements, upper limb reaching and grasping movements, as well as balance and gait. Accumulating evidence indicates that amblyopia is associated with considerable deficits in visuomotor behaviour during amblyopic eye viewing, as well as adaptations in behaviour during binocular and fellow eye viewing in adults and children. Importantly, due to amblyopia heterogeneity, visuomotor development in children and motor skill performance in adults may be significantly influenced by the etiology and clinical features, such as visual acuity and stereoacuity. Studies with larger cohorts of children and adults are needed to disentangle the unique contribution of these clinical characteristics to the development and performance of visuomotor behaviours.
Highlights
Amblyopia is a common neurodevelopmental disorder clinically defined as reduced visual acuity that cannot be immediately corrected using optical refraction [1]
Perdziak et al used the disappearance of a central stimulus as the “go” signal to initiate saccades, which is in contrast to the other studies that used a peripheral stimulus to elicit reflexive saccades. These results provide the first evidence to suggest that strabismic amblyopia may affect saccade initiation when viewing with the fellow eye
Comparing the reaction time of the anisometropic amblyopia group with that of the control group showed no significant difference between the groups or viewing conditions
Summary
Amblyopia is a common neurodevelopmental disorder clinically defined as reduced visual acuity that cannot be immediately corrected using optical refraction [1]. In addition to the sensory visual deficits, there are a variety of changes in the perceptual, cognitive, and motor functions in children and adults with amblyopia (for reviews, see [3,4,5]). The widespread effects of amblyopia on perceptual and sensorimotor functions are not surprising given that vision provides a key sensory input necessary for the optimal development of neural circuits and behavioural functions [3, 6,7,8]. Support for the widespread cortical reorganization was recently shown in a study with 5 to 15year-old children, which reported reduced functional connectivity density at rest in the anisometropic amblyopia. To highlight the changes in motor function associated with decorrelated binocular visual experience during development, we begin by introducing the key components of visuomotor control
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