The two year scope of this project is designed to introduce application of novel quantitative techniques in diagnosis of visual disorders of cerebral palsy (CP) patients & further employ these techniques to explicate the role of early treatment for achieving satisfactory binocular interactions in CP patients. It would address two important issues(a) it will quantify the degree of visual sensory (cerebral visual) versus visual motor (gaze apraxia) impairment (b) it will provide guidelines for the number of surgical interventions necessary to restore binocular vision in CP patients. Also a major stumbling block in prevention and treatment of CP is lack of knowledge of the underlying neural mechanisms. Here we also propose to develop an appropriate macaque model of CP. Thus, the specific aims are 1) Children with CP have a high prevalence of motoric gaze deficits (inability to accurately fixate and track targets of interest) that masquerade as cortical blindness. 2) Children with CP who have strabismus (eye misalignment) & nystagmus (eye oscillation) may achieve functional recovery of binocular vision & gaze stability, by early treatment interventions. 3) Infant macaque monkeys develop the gaze, gait & MRI abnormalities of CP after chronic brain ventricle infusions of cytokines. ? ?
| Ghasia, Fatema; Brunstrom, Janice; Gordon, Mae et al. (2008) Frequency and severity of visual sensory and motor deficits in children with cerebral palsy: gross motor function classification scale. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 49:572-80 |
