The Impact of the Years of Blindness on Sleep and Dreaming Processes and the Relationships With Spatial Abilities

Launched by ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI TECNOLOGIA · Oct 7, 2024

Keywords

ClinConnect Summary

BLINDREAM is an observational neuropsychology study purely for scientific purposes, with no diagnostic or therapeutic aims. This study aims to assess the impact of blindness on sleep and dream processes and their relationship with perceptual and spatial memory performance, examining the connection with clinical, psychological/behavioral indices, neurobiological characteristics, and electrophysiological measures. Specifically, the study seeks to test the following hypotheses:

* Circadian Rhythm Desynchronization: To determine if visual deprivation leads to circadian rhythm desynchronization...

Gender

ALL

Eligibility criteria

• Inclusion Criteria:
• • Signature of the informed consent;
• • The participating subjects may have typical or atypical development (i.e., group with visual disability). In the case of visual impairment, the disability should be congenital (from birth) or late onset. Furthermore, the following requirements must be met: subjects with visual disabilities must be classified according to current diagnostic rules, with visual problems present from birth or occurring later, with residual vision lower than 1.3 LogMAR;
• • Age range required is ≥ 18 years old and ≤ 85 years old;
• • Any Gender;
• • Any ethnicity, as long as a good knowledge of the Italian language.
• Exclusion Criteria:
• * Participant with a disability/condition/comorbidity that prevents participation and/or does not guarantee the safety of the patient during the execution of the tests and/or does not guarantee the quality/reliability of the data:
• • Tactile and/or acoustic hypersensitivity (specifically, the tolerance of the equipment will be assessed);
• • Deafness;
• • Taking drugs and neuroactive substances and having taken them in the last six months;
• • Comorbidity with another clinically significant and uncontrolled pathology;
• • Being affected, to the best of their knowledge, by pathologies of the central nervous system, and having suffered from epileptic episodes, even minor ones, and convulsive crises in general;
• • Being affected, to the best of their knowledge, by cardio-respiratory pathologies that can influence the macro and microstructure of sleep.
• • Lack of signature of consent or incomplete consent to acknowledge the incompatibilities for participation in the study;
• • To the best of their knowledge, IQ values lower than the threshold limit of normality according to one of the recognized international scales.
• • Pregnant women