Visual Perception in Children with Spina Bifida Myelomeningocele and the Impact of Posterior Cortical Changes

The present study investigated categorical and coordinate visual perception in 81 children with spina bifida myelomeningocele (SBM) relative to 28 controls, and related this performance to indices of cortical thickness, gray matter volume, and white matter volume for a subset of these participants. Results revealed weaknesses for children with SBM on both the categorical and coordinate visual perception tasks relative to controls, though both groups were more accurate on the categorical task than the coordinate task. Children with SBM demonstrated smaller values of cortical thickness, gray matter volume, and white matter volume relative to controls in regions of interest (inferior parietal cortex, superior parietal cortex, middle temporal gyrus, and superior temporal gyrus). There were no relations of corpus callosum volumes to visual perception performance, but relations were noted for cortical thickness, gray matter volume, and white matter volume. The findings supported the Dennis et al. (2006) model and provided insight as to the brain regions impacting visual perception performance for children with SBM.