Comparison of the Behavioral Dynamics Between Visually Impaired Infants and Healthy Controls

An individual senses the world and reflects feedbacks via independent behaviors. Such precise collaboration of the sensory and behavioral systems is fundamental to survival and evolution. When a sensory modality is altered, the behavioral system has the potential to fit in a substitute modality. However, the specific dynamics of human behaviors in response to sensory loss remain largely unknown due to the paucities of representative situations and large-scale samples.

Here, the investigators focused on thousands of human infants who suffered varying degrees of visual stimuli deficiency in early stages, while their behavioral systems remained sensitive and thus retained high behavioral plasticity. Having access to this unique population provides an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the effect of diverse visual conditions on the behavioral system.