TY - GEN
T1 - Clinical and Functional Imaging Changes Induced from Vision Therapy in Patients with Convergence Insufficiency
AU - Alvarez, Tara L.
AU - Scheiman, Mitchell
AU - Santos, Elio M.
AU - Morales, Cristian
AU - Yaramothu, Chang
AU - D'Antonio-Bertagnolli, John Vito
AU - Gohel, Suril
AU - Biswal, Bharat B.
AU - Li, Xiaobo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 IEEE.
PY - 2019/7
Y1 - 2019/7
N2 - Office-Based Vergence/Accommodative Therapy (OBVAT) is an effective treatment for convergence insufficiency (CI) and remediates symptoms in about 75% of patients. Hence, the study of CI patients can serve as a systems-level model to understand the neural mechanisms evoked from rehabilitation. Symptomatic young adult CI patients (N=25) participated in 12 hours of OBVAT and were compared to 25 binocularly normal controls (BNC) using unpaired t-tests. CI patients have significantly lower near point of convergence and positive fusional vergence and were more symptomatic compared to BNC (p<0.0001). Using paired t-tests, significant differences (p<0.0001) were observed between CI patients' baseline and post-OBVAT measurements where the near point of convergence decreased, positive fusional vergence increased, and the results from the Convergence Insufficiency Symptom Survey (CISS) decreased. Using paired t-tests, the mean beta weights of the functional activity significantly increased for the frontal eye fields (p<0.01) and the oculomotor vermis (p<0.05) for CI patients post-OBVAT compared to baseline measurements. These data demonstrate that OBVAT increases functional activity within the brain and improves clinical function and visual symptoms in CI patients.
AB - Office-Based Vergence/Accommodative Therapy (OBVAT) is an effective treatment for convergence insufficiency (CI) and remediates symptoms in about 75% of patients. Hence, the study of CI patients can serve as a systems-level model to understand the neural mechanisms evoked from rehabilitation. Symptomatic young adult CI patients (N=25) participated in 12 hours of OBVAT and were compared to 25 binocularly normal controls (BNC) using unpaired t-tests. CI patients have significantly lower near point of convergence and positive fusional vergence and were more symptomatic compared to BNC (p<0.0001). Using paired t-tests, significant differences (p<0.0001) were observed between CI patients' baseline and post-OBVAT measurements where the near point of convergence decreased, positive fusional vergence increased, and the results from the Convergence Insufficiency Symptom Survey (CISS) decreased. Using paired t-tests, the mean beta weights of the functional activity significantly increased for the frontal eye fields (p<0.01) and the oculomotor vermis (p<0.05) for CI patients post-OBVAT compared to baseline measurements. These data demonstrate that OBVAT increases functional activity within the brain and improves clinical function and visual symptoms in CI patients.
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U2 - 10.1109/EMBC.2019.8857163
DO - 10.1109/EMBC.2019.8857163
M3 - Conference contribution
C2 - 31945855
AN - SCOPUS:85077838073
T3 - Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS
SP - 104
EP - 109
BT - 2019 41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2019
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2019
Y2 - 23 July 2019 through 27 July 2019
ER -