Neuroplasticity in Blind Subjects After Repetitive Tactile Stimulation
NCT ID: NCT01754103
Last Updated: 2012-12-21
Study Results
The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.
Basic Information
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UNKNOWN
NA
24 participants
INTERVENTIONAL
2012-01-31
2014-12-31
Brief Summary
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By performing repetitive tactile stimulation over a period of 3 months,using a tactile stimulator, our group will try to prove several that repetitive tactile stimulation can create cross-modality and improve recognition and localization of patterns in blind people.
Detailed Description
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Cross-modality sensory stimulation may offer a good opportunity to improve recognition, localization and navigation in blind people. Although the neural substrate of this multimodality integration is not fully understood yet. Some areas of the brain, mainly the lateral occipital cortex, are specialized for visual object recognition and they can be activated by tactile stimuli. This activation of the visual cortex might lead to visual-like perception, regardless of the sensory input modality.
In the blind the high demand required by object recognition appears to recruit also ventral and dorsal occipital areas. Blindness modifies neocortical processing of non-visual tasks, including frontoparietal and visual regions during tactile stimulation. It is also known that people with blindness proficient in the use of a visuo-tactile sensory substitution device that presents visual images as patterns of electric stimuli to the subject's tongue, like Bach-y-Rita and Ptito said, show occipital cortex activation in an orientation-discrimination task.
As far as the investigators know there are no studies aimed at understanding the relationship between activation of lateral occipital cortex and the ability to recognize objects presented to the hand along time. In particular, the investigators tested if repetitive passive tactile stimulation leads to activation of visual areas and recognition of spatial patterns in people with blindness.
Conditions
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Keywords
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Study Design
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NA
SINGLE_GROUP
NONE
Study Groups
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Functional Connectivity MRI
Functional Connectivity will be measured by MRI, we will perform one T1WI run as well as three resting state bold based runs. Bold runs parameters: TE 30ms, TR 3000ms, flip angle 90º, gap 0mm, 124 time points, voxel size 3mm, duration 6min18s each, FOV 240x240x141.
Tactile Training
Tactile Training to induce neuroplasticity in the visual pathway, measured with functional connectivity MRI
Interventions
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Tactile Training
Tactile Training to induce neuroplasticity in the visual pathway, measured with functional connectivity MRI
Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria
Exclusion Criteria
7 Years
70 Years
ALL
No
Sponsors
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Harvard University
OTHER
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
OTHER
Responsible Party
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Tomas Ortiz Alonso
MD PhD
Principal Investigators
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Tomás Ortiz Alonso, MD PhD
Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Locations
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Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Countries
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Central Contacts
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Facility Contacts
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Tomas Ortiz Alonso, MD,PhD
Role: primary
Laura Ortiz Teran, MD, PhD
Role: backup
References
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Other Identifiers
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VISION TACTIL
Identifier Type: -
Identifier Source: org_study_id