Ghasia, Fatema, MD

Our laboratory’s work is broadly focused on understanding the role of abnormal neural circuits in strabismus and amblyopia and apply novel strategies for their treatment.

My laboratory based at the Cleveland Clinic focuses on research techniques involving visual psychophysics and eye movement data acquisition and analysis using portable as well as a laboratory-based video-oculography system in children.

Areas of Interest

• To understand the efferent visual neurophysiology in the pathogenesis of amblyopia: Psychophysical studies in healthy subjects have suggested that small fixational eye movements, such as micro-saccades are critical in visual perception and prevention of visual fading. Our laboratory has the unique technology that allows us to capture such fixational eye movements non-invasively with excellent resolution and high sampling rate in pediatric subjects. We measure and quantify fixational eye movements while the amblyopic and healthy children are viewing simple visual targets, complex visual scenes, and performing visual tasks requiring delineation of fine details, for example identifying picture differences. We have shown that fixational eye movements are altered in amblyopes not only in the amblyopic eye but also in the fellow eye. This suggests that amblyopia is not primarily a monocular disorder but is a binocular visual disorder. We have also shown that such changes might lead to well-known crowding phenomenon in amblyopia. In addition, abnormal fixation can be a useful screening tool to identify and monitor treatment of amblyopia in preverbal children.
• To investigate different treatment modalities for children with amblyopia: We are doing a pilot study in collaboration with Dr. Plow’s Lab to investigate the use of non-invasive brain stimulation in older children and adults with residual amblyopia. We have also participated in several multicenter clinical trials assessing different treatment options including patching in the management of these patients.
• To quantitatively study the eye movements to gain insights into the mechanisms causing strabismus: We have used eye movement as a tool to identify quantitative markers in various forms of strabismus and use these to design surgical approaches to achieve better anatomical and functional outcomes.
• To understand the effects of focal lesions of the central nervous system in the pathophysiology of abnormal eye movements, gaze holding deficits, and strabismus: Such studies of “disease model” allows us to identify areas of the nervous system responsible for causing commonly encountered pediatric ocular motility disorders like strabismus and nystagmus.

We are addressing these questions across federally funded through the Clinical and Translational Collaborative of Cleveland and several Private Foundation Research grants.

Publications (Select)

Entire publication list can be found here.