Reduced global processing bias in people with a history of mild traumatic brain injury: Grass everywhere and not a field in sight
type: CreativeWork
description: Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is increasingly recognized as a disconnection syndrome, due to the prevalence of disrupted long-range connections. Long-range connections refer to neural pathways that span across brain regions, allowing communication and synchronization between different brain areas. Disruption of these connections is associated with the inability to efficiently integrate local information (i.e., multiple visual attributes) into the percept of a single global shape. The aim of this thesis was to investigate whether people with a history of mTBI exhibit a reduced ability to integrate local information into meaningful context. Chapter 2 investigated whether visual integration was impaired in people with a history of mTBI, using visual illusions. Susceptibility to visual illusions demonstrates effective integration of visual information to provide a global picture, with surrounding elements automatically integrated into the perception of local elements. Results from Chapter 2 revealed that people with a history of mTBI exhibited decreased susceptibility to visual illusions, suggesting diminished automatic integration of visual information in a global manner; rather, these individuals appeared to prioritize analysis of local details within a visual stimulus. To further investigate this assumption, we employed the Navon task in Chapter 3 to assess whether people with a history of mTBI demonstrated a tendency to prioritize the processing of local details over global information when presented with multiple objects. This task was chosen as it provides a reliable measure of the extent to which individuals engage in global or local processing. The results revealed that people with a recent history of mTBI (within 12 months) had a reduced bias towards processing global elements of a figure (i.e., attending to the overall configuration of the object), indicating a reduced automatic tendency to process visual information as a coherent global percept. In contr…
abstract: Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is increasingly recognized as a disconnection syndrome, due to the prevalence of disrupted long-range connections. Long-range connections refer to neural pathways that span across brain regions, allowing communication and synchronization between different brain areas. Disruption of these connections is associated with the inability to efficiently integrate local information (i.e., multiple visual attributes) into the percept of a single global shape. The aim of this thesis was to investigate whether people with a history of mTBI exhibit a reduced ability to integrate local information into meaningful context. Chapter 2 investigated whether visual integration was impaired in people with a history of mTBI, using visual illusions. Susceptibility to visual illusions demonstrates effective integration of visual information to provide a global picture, with surrounding elements automatically integrated into the perception of local elements. Results from Chapter 2 revealed that people with a history of mTBI exhibited decreased susceptibility to visual illusions, suggesting diminished automatic integration of visual information in a global manner; rather, these individuals appeared to prioritize analysis of local details within a visual stimulus. To further investigate this assumption, we employed the Navon task in Chapter 3 to assess whether people with a history of mTBI demonstrated a tendency to prioritize the processing of local details over global information when presented with multiple objects. This task was chosen as it provides a reliable measure of the extent to which individuals engage in global or local processing. The results revealed that people with a recent history of mTBI (within 12 months) had a reduced bias towards processing global elements of a figure (i.e., attending to the overall configuration of the object), indicating a reduced automatic tendency to process visual information as a coherent global percept. In contr…
author: Sidhu, Amanpreet
license: https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstreams/e7cc4ff7-dae6-4a11-99da-e788628cf6f5/download
date published: 2024
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:57:38Z
provider: University Waikato
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The University of Waikato