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Visual and non-visual navigation in blind patients with a retinal prosthesis

Garcia, S.; Petrini, K.; Rubin, G.; Da Cruz, L.; Nardini, M.

Visual and non-visual navigation in blind patients with a retinal prosthesis Thumbnail


Authors

S. Garcia

K. Petrini

G. Rubin

L. Da Cruz



Abstract

Human adults with normal vision can combine visual landmark and non-visual self-motion cues to improve their navigational precision. Here we asked whether blind individuals treated with a retinal prosthesis could also benefit from using the resultant new visual signal together with non-visual information when navigating. Four patients (blind for 15-52 years) implanted with the Argus II retinal prosthesis (Second Sight Medical Products Inc. Sylmar, CA), and five age-matched and six younger controls, participated. Participants completed a path reproduction and a triangle completion navigation task, using either an indirect visual landmark and non-visual self-motion cues or non-visual self-motion cues only. Control participants wore goggles that approximated the field of view and the resolution of the Argus II prosthesis. In both tasks, control participants showed better precision when navigating with reduced vision, compared to without vision. Patients, however, did not show similar improvements when navigating with the prosthesis in the path reproduction task, but two patients did show improvements in the triangle completion task. Additionally, all patients showed greater precision than controls in both tasks when navigating without vision. These results indicate that the Argus II retinal prosthesis may not provide sufficiently reliable visual information to improve the precision of patients on tasks, for which they have learnt to rely on non-visual senses.

Citation

Garcia, S., Petrini, K., Rubin, G., Da Cruz, L., & Nardini, M. (2015). Visual and non-visual navigation in blind patients with a retinal prosthesis. PLoS ONE, 10(7), Article e0134369. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134369

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 6, 2015
Publication Date Jul 30, 2015
Deposit Date Jul 17, 2015
Publicly Available Date Sep 4, 2015
Journal PLoS ONE
Electronic ISSN 1932-6203
Publisher Public Library of Science
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 10
Issue 7
Article Number e0134369
DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134369
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1404907

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Published Journal Article (1.1 Mb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2015 Garcia et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.






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