Visual Neuropsychology in Development: Anatomo-Functional Brain Mechanisms of Action/Perception Binding in Health and Disease

Abstract

Vision is the main entrance for environmental input to the human brain. Even if vision is our most used sensory modality, its importance is not limited to environmental exploration. Rather it has strong links to motor competences, further extending to cognitive and social aspects of human life. These multifaceted relationships are particularly important in developmental age and become dramatically evident in presence of complex deficits originating from visual aberrancies. The present review summarizes the available neuropsychological evidence on the development of visual competences, with a particular focus on the associated visuo-motor integration skills in health and disease. With the aim of supporting future research and interventional settings, the goal of the present review is to constitute a solid base to help the translation of neuropsychological hypotheses into straightforward empirical investigations and rehabilitation/training protocols. This approach will further increase the impact, ameliorate the acceptance, and ease the use and implementation of lab-derived intervention protocols in real-life situations.

Preschool Children’s Processing of Events during Verb Learning: Is the Focus on People (Faces) or Their Actions (Hands)?

“…Linking the present study to some basic findings concerning brain development (e.g., [29]), there is a brain area for processing face-like stimuli (the fusiform face area) which appears to help infants as young as 4 months old to process faces, and which appears to continue to develop during childhood. Given these general facts, it seems likely that this FFA guided our preschool children's attention to the agent's head/face during our study.…”

Neuro-Behavioral Correlates of Executive Dysfunctions in Dyslexia Over Development From Childhood to Adulthood

“…These findings were echoed by Provazza and colleagues demonstrating a similar visual processing challenge in this population (Provazza et al, 2019). Considering the brain networks involved, for example, in visuospatial processing (Perruchoud et al, 2016) or attention (Pamplona et al, 2020) comprise a large number of brain regions and related interconnections both in adulthood and development (Ionta, 2021), it is possible that in individuals with dyslexia, possibly over time/age, natural neuroplastic compensatory mechanisms are put in place to establish alternative neural activations/connections which would make dyslectic people able to compensate their deficits and resemble the performance of their age-matched non-dyslectic peers in the domains of organization, visual-spatial abilities, shifting, and attention. Despite the great benefit behavioral and cognitive testing provide when discussing reading and EF abilities in those with dyslexia, one limitation of behavioral tests is that they can be considered versatile in the functions they assess.…”

Electrophysiological Evidence Reveals the Asymmetric Transfer from the Right to Left Hemisphere as Key to Reading Proficiency

“…Furthermore, the present investigation revealed an interhemispheric pattern of asymmetric transfer, encompassing the parietal and frontal regions, as depicted in Figure 2 . While the changes in the processing of the visual cortex are commonly implicated in reading proficiency [ 50 , 51 , 52 ], recent studies have indicated that the development of reading is also associated with the maturation of brain regions beyond the visual cortex [ 53 ]. Specifically, Ionta (2021) conducted a comprehensive review of previous neuropsychological evidence [ 53 ], highlighting the importance of visuo–motor integration skills and proposing that reading development may induce neurally based alterations in brain areas other than the visual cortex.…”

“…While the changes in the processing of the visual cortex are commonly implicated in reading proficiency [ 50 , 51 , 52 ], recent studies have indicated that the development of reading is also associated with the maturation of brain regions beyond the visual cortex [ 53 ]. Specifically, Ionta (2021) conducted a comprehensive review of previous neuropsychological evidence [ 53 ], highlighting the importance of visuo–motor integration skills and proposing that reading development may induce neurally based alterations in brain areas other than the visual cortex. Previous research has presented a visual neuropsychological model that explains two main streams [ 53 , 54 ], the “what” pathway in the ventral stream and the “where” pathway in the dorsal stream.…”

“…Specifically, Ionta (2021) conducted a comprehensive review of previous neuropsychological evidence [ 53 ], highlighting the importance of visuo–motor integration skills and proposing that reading development may induce neurally based alterations in brain areas other than the visual cortex. Previous research has presented a visual neuropsychological model that explains two main streams [ 53 , 54 ], the “what” pathway in the ventral stream and the “where” pathway in the dorsal stream. The former passes signals from V1 (primary visual cortex), V2 (secondary visual cortex), V3 (third visual cortex), and V4 (fourth visual cortex) up to the inferior temporal cortex, which is primarily engaged in object recognition, while the latter passes signals from V1, V2, V3, and the superior/medial temporal sulcus up to the parietal cortex, which is mainly involved in encoding the visuo–spatial and motion-related processing of a visual input [ 55 , 56 ].…”