Cortical Visual Impairment and Visual Attentiveness

Sheba Medical Center

Status: Completed

Conditions: Cerebral Palsy; Cortical Visual Impairment

Treatments: Behavioral: cross-modal sensory stimulation

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00342108

SHEBA-06-4162-AB-CTIL

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study will investigate the effect of enhanced visual and cross-modal environments upon the visual attentiveness of multiply handicapped children diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy (CP) and Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI).

Research Hypothesis

1. Adapted visual environments which present controlled auditory, tactile, proprioceptive or contrasting visual background stimulation will enhance the visual attentiveness to a given visual stimulus of children diagnosed with CP and CVI.
2. Systematic, repetitive, visual stimulation over time, improves the visual attentiveness and/or visual-motor responses of CP-CVI children.
3. The analysis of additional behavioral responses to visual stimuli is a critical component in evaluating the perceptual development of visual attention in CP-CVI children.

Use of Noldus: The Observer, an advanced objective computerized observation program, will enable precise detection of the neurobehavioral responses of the participants. Both overt and covert responses will be observed, analyzed and correlated to identify the level of attention of each participant.

Enrollment: 60 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 2 to 21 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• two to twelve years of age
• diagnosis of: CP, mental retardation (MR) and CVI (Control group participants without visual disability)

Exclusion criteria

• N/A

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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60 participants in 2 patient groups

1

Experimental group

Description:

Diagnosis: CP, moderate to severe MR and CVI

Treatment:

Behavioral: cross-modal sensory stimulation

2

Experimental group

Description:

Diagnosis: CP, Moderate to severe MR, no visual impairment

Treatment:

Behavioral: cross-modal sensory stimulation