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Retinal-Specificity of Sensory Eye Dominance and Its Learning-Induced Improvements
Ka Yee Kam1, Dorita H F Chang1
1Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science
|April 20, 2026
Summary
Sensory eye dominance (SED) is stable across the visual field for most individuals, and training-induced changes are localized. Early visual areas likely underlie eye dominance and its plasticity.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Visual Perception
- Ophthalmology
Background:
- Sensory eye dominance (SED) is typically measured only at the fovea.
- It is unknown if SED is uniform across the entire visual field.
- Understanding SED plasticity is crucial for visual training paradigms.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether sensory eye dominance (SED) varies across the visual field.
- To determine if training-induced SED changes transfer to untrained retinal locations.
Main Methods:
- Forty-eight normal-sighted adults participated in two experiments.
- A dichoptic signal-in-noise motion task quantified SED and served as training.
- SED was mapped at the fovea and 16 peripheral locations (Experiment 1).
- SED was assessed before and after foveal training at multiple locations (Experiment 2).
Main Results:
- No systematic variation in SED was found across the visual field at the group level.
- Individuals with weaker dominance showed more inconsistent eye dominance patterns.
- Perceptual training improved SED only at the trained foveal location; no transfer occurred.
- Motion sensitivity improved across all tested retinal locations after training.
Conclusions:
- Localized variability in SED, especially in weakly dominant individuals, suggests specific neural substrates.
- Retinotopic specificity of training effects points to early retinotopic visual areas.
- These areas are implicated in both sensory eye dominance and its plasticity.
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