The visually evoked potential in humans with amblyopia: pseudorandom modulation of uniform field and sine-wave gratings.

The visually evoked potential was recorded in response to pseudorandom modulation of a uniform field and sine-wave gratings in humans with naturally occurring amblyopia. Analysis in the frequency domain showed similar temporal tuning when the nonamblyopic and amblyopic eye were stimulated with a uniform field and with spatial stimuli. Although most observers showed some reduction in the cortical response to stimulation of the amblyopic eye with uniform field modulation, all observers showed reductions in the response obtained for stimulation of the amblyopic eye with spatial stimuli. This decrease in the cortical response to stimulation of the amblyopic eye for sine-wave gratings was present at either the low and middle temporal frequencies or over the range of temporal frequencies tested, and was greater than that observed in those amblyopes who also showed reductions with uniform field modulation. Latency measures in the time domain showed increases in the response of the early components when the amblyopic eye was stimulated with a uniform field and with sine-wave gratings above 2 c/deg. These electrophysiological results confirm the results obtained psychophysically which suggest that although amblyopia is primarily a spatial anomaly, the response is influenced by the temporal attributes of the stimulus as well.