NCT03109314

Combining Donepezil With Perceptual Learning in Normal and Amblyopic Human The Effect of Donepezil on Perceptual Learning in Adult Amblyopia

The Effect of Donepezil on Perceptual Learning in Adult Amblyopia

• Status: Completed
• Phase: Phase 4
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 20 (actual)
• Sponsor: Dennis Levi · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The research deals with amblyopia or lazy eye, a condition that affects about 3% of the population, and results in a variety of visual deficits. Recent work suggests that there is limited neural plasticity in the visual system of adults with amblyopia. This study is aimed at understanding and increasing this plasticity. In this study, the investigators aim to understand how the amblyopic brain learns and how this process is affected by a drug called donepezil, which is sometimes given as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. The investigators hope that this study will help to identify the chemical components that help the brain to learn, as well as the mechanism of amblyopia. The investigators also plan to test the normal periphery, as control.

Detailed description

The research deals with amblyopia or lazy eye, a condition that affects about 3% of the population, and results in a variety of visual deficits. Recent work suggests that there is limited neural plasticity in the visual system of adults with amblyopia. This study is aimed at understanding and increasing this plasticity. In this study, the investigators aim to understand how the amblyopic brain learns and how this process is affected by a drug called donepezil, which is sometimes given as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. The investigators hope that this study will help to identify the chemical components that help the brain to learn, as well as the mechanism of amblyopia. The investigators also plan to test the normal periphery, as control. In this study, donepezil will be administered while amblyopic subjects (or normally sighted subjects tested in the periphery) are trained on a low-contrast single-letter recognition task, or an uncrowd task (recognizing a letter closely embedded within two other letters). Subjects will be asked to identify the target letter (the low-contrast single letter, or the letter embedded within other letters). Training will take place for 10 consecutive days. Pre- and post-tests will be conducted immediately before and after training, and will consist of the measurements of visual acuity, crowding extent and contrast threshold for recognizing single letters.

Conditions

• Amblyopia

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DRUG	Donepezil	Donepezil will be administered to subjects three days before each training, and during training, to evaluate if donepezil improves the effectiveness of training.
BEHAVIORAL	Single-letter training	Subjects will undergo training to identify single letters (10,000 trials, or 10 blocks per session for 10 sessions).
BEHAVIORAL	Uncrowd training	Subjects will undergo training to identify letters closely flanked by other letters (10,000 trials, or 10 blocks per session for 10 sessions).

Timeline

• Start date: 2012-05-01
• Primary completion: 2018-12-01
• Completion: 2018-12-01
• First posted: 2017-04-12
• Last updated: 2019-01-17

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States

Regulatory

• FDA-regulated drug study