
Saeideh Ghahghaei
Tabs







Investigating Reading in Individuals with Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI)
In this project, we aim to understand (i) how CVI affects reading, (ii) how current rehabilitation techniques or assistive technologies help improve reading in CVI and (iii) what more can be done to assist those individuals with CVI
Stereopsis in Macular Degeneration
Macular degeneration affects the central retina, often causing asymmetrical damage to the two eyes. How does this asymmetrical loss affect stereopsis — the percept of depth generated by the small separation of image features in the two eyes?

Reading in mTBI
People with mTBI often complain about dificulty in reading in spite of normal results in usual eye exams. We investigate this issue by looking at accommodation and reading rate and subjective measurement of reading difficuties for a variaty of reading tasks in normal and mTBI population. ...
Adaptive Visual Strategies for Individuals with Macular Degeneration
In this project we try to gain a better understanding of what visual strategies people use to gather information in the world.
Fovea Use During Smooth Pursuit
There is continuing debate as to whether smooth pursuit relies on the foveation of a moving target, especially when the target is compact. Previous studies have shown that gaze is placed on the center-of-mass of a target during saccadic eye movements. This research aims to understand whether eye...
Eye Movements and Accommodation Patterns in Strabismus
Strabismus misaligned eyes is a common developmental condition in young children that can lead to amblyopia or poor vision and other forms of low vision. This project looks at the eye movements in relation to accommodation or focusing power in these patients to determine predictors of strabismus and outcome of treatment, with the goal of improving early detection, intervention and treatment.
Eye-Hand coordination in Central Field Loss
Eye-hand coordination in AMD

The Window of Spatial Attention in Reading
We investigate the dynamics of spatial attention while the eyes move around to gather information.
Upper Depth Limit Across Visual Field
Stereopsis is important for tasks of daily living such as eye-hand coordination. It is best in central vision but is also mediated by the periphery. Previously we have shown that individuals with central-field loss who have residual stereopsis in the periphery perform better at an eye-hand-coordination task. Here we sought to determine what sets the limit of stereopsis, defined as the largest disparity that supports the sustained appearance of depth, in the near periphery in healthy individuals.

Calibration of Eccentric Power Refractor
Eccentric power refractors need to be calibrated for accommodation and gaze position for individual participants. Calibration however can be time consuming. We look at different conditions in which calibration is necessary or preferable.
This project is now completed. Please see the...

Parafoveal Crowding
Crowding increases with eccentricity, and is most readily observed in the periphery. During natural, active vision however, central vision plays an important role. Measures of critical distance to estimate crowding are difficult in central vision, as these distances are small. Any overlap of...
SKERI-VF
Walker et al (Renninger, Psomadakis, Dang & Fletcher, 2008) suggested a novel method to estimate the monocular scotoma area from perimetry data in macular degeneration based on (i) an optic-disc based estimation of the location of the fovea and (ii) the increase in the receptive field size with eccentricity. Here, Dr Walker and I introduce a new GUI that applies this method to data from the Optos OCT/SLO.

Impact of Eye Movements on Reach Performance
Aim 2 of Reaching with Central Field Loss

Reaching with Central Field Loss
Parent R01

Strategies for Efficient Visual Information Gathering
Active visual search
Target Selection in the Real World
Attention and Segmentation
I am a cognitive psychologists and a vision scientist. I am interested in understanding reading problems in order to improve the reading experience. Along with Dr. Chandna, I study higher visual function deficits in children with cerebral visual impairment (CVI). Specifically, in collaboration with with Dr. Chandna I lead the research to investigate how CVI affects reading in each child in order to improve or develop individualized (re)habilitation techniques or assistive technologies. In addition, I am interested to understand how TBI (which is a form of CVI) affects reading in adults. I am also interested in binocular vision (stereopsis, fusion, suppression) and how the two eyes work together during daily living tasks in individuals with normal or abnormal vision, such as strabismus or amblyopia. To do so, I use (i) qualitative methods such as as in-depth interviews, surveys and questionnaires and (ii) quantitative methods such as regression, factor analysis and cluster analysis on objective data (e.g., eye-movements and accommodation measurements; behavioural data on psychophysics experiments or EEG). Furthermore, I develop applications that can be used for research or rehabilitation.