Multisensory Rehabilitation of Vision Loss After Cortical Damage

June 15, 2026 updated by: Wake Forest University Health Sciences
Damage to visual cortex on one side of the brain frequently produces a profound and permanent blindness in contralesional space (hemianopia), a debilitating condition that causes enormous suffering for patients and their families.

Study Overview

Status

Not yet recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

The over-arching objective of the current proposal is to evaluate the functional recovery of vision in hemianopic (blindness in one hemifield) and quadrantanopic (blindness in one quadrant) patients engaged with a multisensory training paradigm. This will pave the way for clinical trials in which this simple, non-invasive training paradigm can be developed for therapeutic use to treat blindness resulting from cortical damage.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

30

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Contact Backup

Study Locations

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Patients will be recruited from the local subject population hospitalized/seen by Ophthalmology, Neurosurgery, and Neurology at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist
  • diagnosis of stable homonymous hemianopia (>4 weeks) with absence of hemineglect
  • a lesion encompassing at least primary visual cortex but sparing parietal cortex, to include lesions caused by an ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke or post-surgical changes due to an oncologic or non-oncologic tumor
  • normal or correctable auditory and cognitive function
  • willingness to participate in the three-month program
  • ability to perform visual discriminations in their intact field
  • life expectancy ≥12 months

Exclusion Criteria:

  • diagnosis of an unstable homonymous hemianopia and/or with hemineglect,
  • Abnormal or uncorrectable auditory and cognitive function
  • unwillingness to participate in the program
  • inability to perform the visual testing in their intact field
  • life expectancy < 12 months
  • Any other condition that would compromise their ability to complete the study.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Treatment
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: multisensory training

At the completion of this initial intervention (12 research sessions + clinical visits at the time of the first and last session), participants will receive a second kinetic visual field test and a 30-2 visual field test to measure any changes according to the clinical standard.

Two additional follow-up procedures are scheduled for participants identified as showing visual recovery after the initial intervention.

Three months after completing the initial treatment, participants will have an additional research visit. If testing during this visit reveals that vision has degraded from the initial series, participants will be scheduled for 2-5 additional research visits (with testing and training) to reinstate recovery with re-intervention.
Behavioral: Multisensory Rehabilitation
12 research sessions + clinical visits at the time of the first and last session - In each session, there will be a "training phase" in which subjects will be exposed (and respond) to spatiotemporally congruent pairs of visual-auditory stimuli presented within their blinded field, with occasional probes of unisensory visual stimuli on both sides of space. There will also be a "testing" phase during which they are presented with visual stimuli in virtual reality (VR) to assess multiple aspects of visual function. This "visual battery" consists of innocuous stimuli, e.g., flashes of light or moving bars, presented at intensities consistent with those experienced during daily life. Subjects detect or discriminate the stimuli (e.g., judge whether a stimulus was flashed, or which stimulus is brighter) and report confidence in assessments.
Other Names:
  • multisensory training paradigm

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Change in National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score
Time Frame: Month 6
The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) is a standardized, 15-item physical and mental examination used by healthcare providers to objectively quantify the severity of an acute stroke. Scores range from 0 (no neurological deficit) to 42 (severe impairment).
Month 6
Change in Activity Inventory scores
Time Frame: Month 6
A questionnaire that asks how vision affects everyday activities. It helps show which daily tasks are most important to the participant and how difficult those tasks may be because of vision problems. Patients rate the importance of a goal and the difficulty of tasks, resulting in an individually tailored dataset. This adaptive approach provides a comprehensive profile of how visual limitations affect everyday life.
Month 6

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Wake Forest University Health Sciences

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Benjamin Rowland, PhD, Wake Forest University Health Sciences

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Estimated)

August 1, 2026

Primary Completion (Estimated)

December 1, 2027

Study Completion (Estimated)

December 1, 2027

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

June 15, 2026

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

June 15, 2026

First Posted (Actual)

June 22, 2026

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

June 22, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

June 15, 2026

Last Verified

June 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • IRB00151786

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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