Quality of images — not quantity — impacts amblyopia

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The quality of images and light striking the retina — and not the quantity — is what causes amblyopia, researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory said.

“Depriving one eye of crisp images rapidly causes cortical neurons to lose responsiveness to the deprived eye,” Mark Bear, PhD, one of the authors, said in a press release.

The researchers tested vision in animal subjects with normal vision, comparing two days of lid closure in one eye with two days of blur using an overcorrecting contact lens. The overcorrecting lens was “just as bad” as closing the eyelid for weakening connections in the developing brain, the release said.

“The quality rather than the quantity of retinal illumination is the key factor here,” Dr. Bear said.