Abstract
Purpose: :
To study the physiological change of cortex activated by stereovision with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) , to investigate the path of stereovision forming and application of fMRI in stereovision study.
Methods: :
fMRI examination was performed on 12 healthy volunteers by using EPI sequences on a 3.0T MR scanner. In the block designing, random dot stereograms(RDS) with 500 arcsec horizontal disparity were set as task states, and random dot graphs without horizontal disparity were plotted as control state. Statistical analysis was carried out off line by using SPM2 in single-subject method.
Results: :
Brodmann Area (BA) 18 of bilateral cerebral hemispheres and the dorsal vision pathway of right cerebral hemisphere, including BA 19, BA 37 and BA 7,were activated. Also middle frontal gyrus of left cerebral hemisphere and limbic system were strongly activated, while primary visual cortex was not involved.
Conclusions: :
The formation of stereovision relates to several encephalic regions, the dorsal vision pathway of right cerebral hemisphere plays an important part in it. The physiological procedure of cortex activation can be observed directly by fMRI. This study indicated fMRI will be used widely in stereovision researches because it is non-invasive and with hight spatial and temporal resolution.
Keywords: visual cortex • binocular vision/stereopsis • imaging methods (CT, FA, ICG, MRI, OCT, RTA, SLO, ultrasound)