I am interested in the visual system development, how it is affected as a result of amblyopia and how plasticity allows to overcome neurological deficits to achieve functional tasks such as face recognition or reading. Amblyopia is caused by a mismatch between the images sent to the visual cortex by each eye during the critical period of the visual system development (i.e., before 7 or 10 years old, depending on the studies). This mismatch derives from strabismus, anisometropia, or an organic cause, such as ptosis or congenital cataract. Amblyopia causes suppression of the non-dominant eye, a decreased visual acuity in the suppressed eye, and an altered binocular vision. Thus, amblyopia is associated with an abnormal functioning of the ventral pathway resulting in low reading performance, among other visual deficits. The dorsal pathway is also affected, leading to difficulties in visuomotor skills, such as grasping or balance.

My research topics include the analysis of the extent to which the ventral and dorsal pathways are affected in amblyopia, and the differences in the alteration patterns according to amblyopia etiologies. Techniques used to address these questions include the steady-state visual evoked potentials and eye-tracking paradigms. I currently work as an Ophthalmologist in Brussels after having deepened my knowledge in biological signal processing (speech, neural signals) during a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering in Mons (FPMs) and Lausanne (EPFL) and my PhD (2002) at UCLouvain.

Hemptinne C, Deravet N, Orban de Xivry JJ, Lefèvre P, Yüksel D. Influence of prior and visual information on eye movements in amblyopic children. J Comput Neurosci. 2020 Sep 8. doi: 10.1007/s10827-020-00764-3.

Hemptinne C, La Grange N, Yüksel D. Vision screening in Belgian children: too much or not enough? Ophthalmic Epidemiol. 2020 May 22:1-12. doi: 10.1080/09286586.2020.1767151.

Hemptinne C, Aerts F, Pellissier T, Ramirez Ruiz C, Alves Cardoso V, Vanderveken C, Yüksel D. Motor skills in children with strabismus. J AAPOS. 2020 Apr;24(2):76.e1-76.e6. doi: 10.1016/j.jaapos.2020.01.005.

Hemptinne C, Boschi A, Duprez T, Ivanoiu A, Coutel M. Misdiagnosed case of multiple sclerosis turns out to be a Susac Syndrome: a case report. J Fr Ophtalmol. 2020 Feb 5. doi: 10.1016/j.jfo.2019.09.004.

Hemptinne C, Liu-Shuang J, Yüksel D, Rossion B. Rapid objective assessment of contrast sensitivity and visual acuity with sweep visual evoked potentials and an extended electrode array. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2018;59:1144–1157. doi.org/10.1167/iovs.17-23248. PDF