Background: A growing number of older adults with vision loss require vision rehabilitation services to address reading difficulties. Braille may be the most appropriate option for those with functional blindness, poor visual prognoses or dual sensory loss. While standardized braille assessment and training protocols are in place to guide interventions with children, there is a high degree of inconsistency and a lack of evidence-based knowledge about best practices to use with adults and seniors who require braille training. Age-related declines in tactile acuity, motor dexterity and cognition present unique barriers to braille training, but very little is known about the impact of aging on factors related to braille reading performance. The aim of this scoping review is to identify the perceptual, motor, and cognitive factors related to braille reading performance and to determine how these factors have been assessed or measured among blind adults and elderly individuals in prior studies.
Methods: Using the scoping review method, a comprehensive search was conducted in three databases: PubMed, Educational Resource Information Center (ERIC), and the Cochrane library. Two reviewers screened articles for inclusion to ensure internal agreement, based on identified exclusion criteria.
Results: The initial search resulted in 1,565 qualitative and quantitative articles. The results synthesize the perceptual, motor and cognitive factors known to predict braille reading performance, how these variables are impacted by the aging process, and how they have been measured in prior studies.
Conclusions: This scoping review is the first step in working towards the development of evidence-based assessment and training protocols to standardized practice with adult and senior clients who require braille training. It also serves to clarify where current knowledge gaps exist in order to guide future studies on braille reading and aging.
Background: Perceptual profiles, or the performance on visual-perceptual tasks that reflect early visual information processing, have been used to suggest condition-specific visuo-perceptual abilities across neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs). The complexity-specific hypothesis (Bertone et al., 2010) was based on perceptual profiles defined by a selective decrease in sensitivity to more complex, texture-defined information in adults with autism and fragile-x syndrome, suggesting the atypical development of neural networks underlying early perception in NDCs. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the complexity-specific hypothesis is applicable to children and adolescents with different NDCs by defining and comparing their perceptual profiles.
Methods: A single interval, two alternative forced-choice identification paradigm was used to measure the perceptual profiles of 64 participants with a NDC (MIQ =78) and 43 typically developing (TD) participants (MIQ =103), aged 5 to 17 years. Participants with a NDC were diagnosed with either: autism spectrum disorder (ASD, n=32), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, n=9), or intellectual disability (ID, n=12). Perceptual profiles were defined by measuring participants’ sensitivity to static (orientation identification task) and dynamic (direction identification task) gratings (1 cpd) defined by either luminance (simple) or texture (complex) information. The Weschler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence 2 (WASI-2) was used as a measure of cognitive ability.
Results: When performance was averaged across NDC and TD participants, no between-group difference in sensitivity was found for any of the conditions assessed. However, when assessed as a function of diagnosis, we found that the ID group was less sensitive to both the luminance (P=0.04) and texture-defined (P=0.01) dynamic information when compared to the TD group. Notably, although the perceptual profile of the ASD group was similar of that of the TD group, a significant positive relationship between mental age and sensitivity to both texture-defined static (r=?0.5) and dynamic (r=?0.4) information was found.
Conclusions: The ?ndings demonstrate that different conditions-specific perceptual profiles exist across children and adolescents with different types of NDCs, exemplified by differences found in this study for the ID group. In addition, the positive relationship between perceptual performance and mental age within the ASD group suggests that these perceptual abilities may still be undergoing maturation during the age-range assessed, and provides support for the complexity-specific hypothesis specific to the ASD profile during development. These results exemplify the importance of defining perceptual profiles at different periods of development across NDCs, since the tenets of most perceptually-relevant cognitive theories are based primarily on adult data.
Background: Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is the major cause of blindness in children, mainly caused by the retinal neovascularization (NV). Mounting of evidences shown that macrophage plays a pivotal role in the regulation of angiogenesis in ROP. Numerous studies confirmed that the deletion of macrophage significantly reduce the neovascularized areas in the oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR) model. We have been studied the effect of lymphocyte derived-microparticles (LMPs) over ten years. LMPs are extracellular vesicles derived from apoptotic human CEM T lymphocytes. Our previous studies demonstrated that LMPs possess strong anti-angiogenic effect. Recently we observed that LMPs are capable to switch the phenotype of macrophage, thus to suppress the choroidal neovascularization (CNV). However, the role of LMPs on macrophage in ROP has not been clarified. Thus, my project is to disclose the relationship between LMPs and macrophage in ROP using the OIR model. Hypothesis: LMPs may inhibit retinal NV in the OIR model through targeting at macrophage by affecting the migration of macrophage, thus to inhibit pathological angiogenesis in ROP.
Methods: Cell culture [RAW 264.7 and bone marrow-derived macrophage (BMDM)] for cell migration and viability assay. Generate the OIR model for in vivo detection of macrophage recruitment. Quantification of retinal NV, immunohistostaining of the macrophage in vivo, ex vivo retinal explants for cell migration and qPCR.
Results: LMPs do not affect RAW 264.7 and BMDM cell viability (P>0.05). LMPs significantly decrease the BMDM cell migration indirectly (P<0.05). I successfully generate the OIR model and confirm that more macrophages infiltrate during retinal angiogenesis with counting the F4/80 immunostaining in the retinal flat mount. LMPs exert inhibiting effect on retinal angiogenesis through decreasing the migration of macrophages in vivo.
Conclusions: LMPs have the negative effect on retinal angiogenesis via reducing the infiltrated macrophages to the neovascularized areas in the OIR model.
Abstract: Pediatric neuro-ophthalmology is a subspecialty within neuro-ophthalmology. Pediatric neuro-ophthalmic diseases must be considered separate from their adult counterparts, due to the distinctive nature of the examination, clinical presentations, and management choices. This manuscript will highlight four common pediatric neuro-ophthalmic disorders by describing common clinical presentations, recommended management, and highlighting recent developments. Diseases discussed include pediatric idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH), pseudopapilledema, optic neuritis (ON) and optic pathway gliomas (OPG). The demographics, diagnosis and management of common pediatric neuro-ophthalmic disease require a working knowledge of the current research presented herein. Special attention should be placed on the differences between pediatric and adult entities such that children can be appropriately diagnosed and treated.
Abstract: Complications of myopia have become an important public health issue with serious socio-economic burdens. Prevention and treatment are both important. The Taiwan Student Vision Care Program (TSVCP) promoted by Ministry of Education (MOE) has been carried out for 3 decades in Taiwan. The myopia prevalence has increased rapidly to a high level and therefore myopia prevention has continued to be the most important item in the program. Therefore, TSVCP aims to decrease the prevalence of myopia, in order to decrease the high myopia related blindness in the future. Recently, outdoor activity has been found to be an important protective factor for myopia and was implemented in TSVCP since 2010. Afterwards, the nationwide vision impairment rate (uncorrected vision 20/25 or less) of elementary school students declined unprecedentedly and continuously in recent years. Evidence-based protective and risk factors for myopia are now clearer. Widespread acknowledgement of myopic disease, preventing the onset of myopia, prompt diagnosis, and early treatment to control progression are all important.
Abstract: Since the 21st century, the development of corneal tissue engineering technology has been developing rapidly. With the progress of biomaterials, cell culture and tissue engineering technology, tissue engineering cornea has gained great development in both basic scientific research and clinical application. In particular, tissue engineered corneal scaffolds are the core components of tissue engineered corneas. It is the focus of current research on tissue engineering cornea to search for scaffolds with good biocompatibility, high safety and good biomechanical properties. In this paper, the recent research progress of tissue engineering corneal materials is reviewed.
Abstract: The biological mechanisms of eye growth and refractive development are increasingly well characterised, a result of many careful studies that have been carried out over many years. As the outer coat of the eye, the sclera has the ultimate impact on the restraint or facilitation of eye growth, thus any changes in its biochemistry, ultrastructure, gross morphology and/or biomechanical properties are critical in refractive error development and, in particular, the development of myopia. The current review briefly revisits our basic understanding of the structure and biomechanics of the sclera and how these are regulated and modified during eye growth and myopia development. The review then applies this knowledge in considering recent advances in our understanding of how the mechanisms of scleral remodelling may be manipulated or controlled, in order to constrain eye growth and limit the development of myopia, in particular the higher degrees of myopia that lead to vision loss and blindness. In doing so, the review specifically considers recent approaches to the strengthening of the sclera, through collagen cross-linking, scleral transplantation, implantation or injection of biomaterials, or the direct therapeutic targeting and manipulation of the biochemical mechanisms known to be involved in myopia development. These latest approaches to the control of scleral changes in myopia are, where possible, placed in the context of our understanding of scleral biology, in order to bring a more complete understanding of current and future therapeutic interventions in myopia, and their consequences.
Abstract: Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is an emerging cause of childhood blindness in the developing countries. The low and middle-income countries are facing common challenges in the midst of the ‘third epidemic’ of ROP. Improvement in neonatal care facilities has increased survival of preterm babies. Lack of awareness and non-uniform standards of care in the ever-increasing number of neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) and special newborn care units (SNCUs) has resulted in this surge of ROP. Apart from low birth weight and the degree of prematurity, use of unblended supplemental oxygen, sepsis, anemia and blood transfusion are important risk factors associated with ROP in developing countries. Atypical forms of aggressive posterior ROP (APROP) are seen in heavier birth weight babies in the developing countries. Prevention of ROP by good quality neonatal care, timely diagnosis by mandatory ROP screening in NICUs and training manpower for laser treatment of ROP requires close collaboration between the neonatologists, ophthalmologists and the policy makers. Team approach and inter-disciplinary co-ordination are keys in a nation’s drive to fight this preventable cause of blindness.
