Visual searching capabilities in Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) subjects

A decrease in visual perception with age was observed due to a decline in neurocognitive and visual functions. Previous studies showed that aging affects visual processes and contextual perceptual phenomena. The aim of our study was to explore the effect of age as well as the effect of Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) on the visual searching task. Three groups of twenty-one subjects were recruited: AMD subjects (mean age 72.29???4.83 years); healthy elderly (72.55???4.95); and young healthy volunteers (28.38???2.77). Visual perception functions were evaluated with a modified barrage test developed by Metrisquare. Our results showed that AMD patients and elderly do not differ in terms of time, omissions and errors. However both were slower to perform the visual perception tests when compared with young adults. Regarding the number of errors and omissions, we only found significant differences between the young and the AMD subjects, the later making more omissions and errors respect to young healthy volunteers. Despite AMD patients made more errors likely because to their poor fixation capability, we could conclude that AMD patients, as well as healthy elderly subjects, could compensate their altered visual strategies by taking more time to perform the visual searching tasks, probably due to cortical plasticity.