The importance of sustained attention for patients with maculopathies

Sustained attention enhances perception in eccentric positions in the Visua l field, which helps patients with foveal vision loss to develop a peripher al 'preferred retinal locus' (PRL). Besides central scotoma topography, loc al Variations of attentional performance could influence the choice of PRL location. We tested sustained attention augmenting peripheral letter recogn ition in 23 maculopathy patients and 15 normally-sighted subjects (eight po sitions, 8 degrees eccentricity). Performance was shown to depend on tested location, which was the same in patients and normals. This indicates that the choice of the PRL location after foveal vision loss can be influenced b y topographic features of sustained attention. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Lt d. All rights reserved.