Piller, Sophia and Senna, Irene and Wiebusch, Dennis and Ben-Zion, Itay and Ernst, Marc O (2023) Grasping behavior does not recover after sight restoration from congenital blindness. Current Biology, 33 (10). pp. 2104-2110. ISSN 0960-9822
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Abstract
We investigated whether early visual input is essential for establishing the ability to use predictions in the control
of actions and for perception. To successfully interact with objects, it is necessary to pre-program bodily
actions such as grasping movements (feedforward control). Feedforward control requires a model for making
predictions, which is typically shaped by previous sensory experience and interaction with the environment.1
Vision is the most crucial sense for establishing such predictions.2,3 We typically rely on visual estimations of
the to-be-grasped object’s size and weight in order to scale grip force and hand aperture accordingly.4–6
Size-weight expectations play a role also for perception, as evident in the size-weight illusion (SWI), in which
the smaller of two equal-weight objects is misjudged to be heavier.7,8 Here, we investigated predictions for
action and perception by testing the development of feedforward controlled grasping and of the SWI in young
individuals surgically treated for congenital cataracts several years after birth. Surprisingly, what typically
developing individuals do easily within the first years of life, namely to adeptly grasp new objects based
on visually predicted properties, cataract-treated individuals did not learn after years of visual experience.
Contrary, the SWI exhibited significant development. Even though the two tasks differ in substantial ways,
these results may suggest a potential dissociation in using visual experience to make predictions about an
object’s features for perception or action. What seems a very simple task—picking up small objects—is in
truth a highly complex computation that necessitates early structured visual input to develop.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information and Comments: | “NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Current Biology. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Current Biology, Vol 33, Issue 10, May 2023, available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960982223004657¨ |
| Faculty / Department: | Faculty of Human and Digital Sciences > School of Psychology |
| Depositing User: | Irene Senna |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Jun 2023 14:06 |
| Last Modified: | 01 May 2024 00:15 |
| URI: | https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/3917 |
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