Abstract
Although former studies demonstrated that patients with mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) have abnormal visual motion sensitivityand motor difficulties (Spiegel et al., 2016), little is known about the effect of mTBI on form perception and visual motor integration. The aim of this study was to evaluate temporal resolution, motion, form, form-from motion perception and visual motor integration in mTBI patients. Eleven mTBI patients (2 females, mean age 22.8 years) and ten age-matched controls (4 females) participated in the study. Motion perception was evaluated with the motion coherence test (MC). Temporal resolution was evaluated with the critical flicker fusion test (CFF). Form discrimination was assessed with form coherence test (FC) and form-from-motion test (FFM). VMI-6 was used to evaluate visual motor integration. The MC, FC, and FFM were displayed in a foveal position, while CFF was assessed in central and peripheral positions. Generalized linear models evidenced differences between mTBI and controls in CFF test and in VMI tasks. In details, in CFF test the mTBI patients had lower performances in peripheral temporal resolution processing as compared to controls and in VMI-6 test they had lower motor and visual motor integration abilities. No difference was found between mTBI patients and controls in MC, FC, and FFM tasks showing similar performance in mTBI and controls in motion, form and form from motion perception. These results demonstrated that mTBI is associate with fine motor and visual motor integration deficits and confirmed anomalous temporal resolution in peripheral vision. Although we failed to find a more generalized visual perception impairment in motion and form perception, caution is needed in interpreting this result because of the small sample size.