[VECP (pattern threshold, amplitude, latency) in different light levels. A comparison between healthy eyes, organic...

According to Bjerrum [5] and Ammann [2], light attenuation decreases visual acuity at different rates in normals, organic and functional amblyopes. In 27 normal subjects, 19 patients with central fixating squint amblyopia and 12 with organically poor vision, we determined the visually evoked cortical potential (VECP) threshold check size, P100 latency and P2 amplitude for reversing checkerboards of variable size at different levels of luminance. After light attenuation, we found a different rate of change for VECP threshold check size in normal subjects and patients with squint amblyopia, which lessened after the fovea was occluded. With suprathreshold checks, normal subjects and patients with squint amblyopia exhibited significantly smaller amplitude/latency changes after light attenuation than patients with organically poor vision. Only patients with squint amblyopia exhibiting a visual acuity of greater than 0.2 showed smaller VECP changes than normal subjects during light attenuation. According to these findings, the different rate of change in visual acuity after light attenuation in normal subjects and patients with squint amblyopia is locus specific [7] rather than luminance specific [12, 13]. We conclude that cortical disinhibition of the parafoveal retina [20] is responsible for the preservation of visual acuity in squint amblyopia during light attenuation.