SM, a 21-year-old female, presents an extensive central scotoma (30
deg) with dense absolute scotoma (visual acuity = 10/100) in the
macular area (10 deg) due to Stargardt's disease. We provide
behavioral evidence of cortical plastic reorganization since the
patient could perform several visual tasks with her poor-vision eyes
better than controls, although high spatial frequency sensitivity and
visual acuity are severely impaired. Between 2.5-deg and 12-deg
eccentricities, SM presented (1) normal acuity for crowded letters,
provided stimulus size is above acuity thresholds for single letters;
(2) a two-fold sensitivity increase (d-prime) with respect to controls
in a simple search task; and (3) largely above-threshold performance in
a lexical decision task carried out randomly by controls. SM's
hyper-vision may reflect a long-term sensory gain specific for
unimpaired low spatial-frequency mechanisms, which may result from
modifications in response properties due to practice-dependent changes
in excitatory/inhibitory intracortical connections.