Researchers Explain How Reading Might Contribute to Myopia
Researchers at the State University of New York (SUNY) are publishing a paper explaining how reading might contribute to myopia.
In a paper that will be published in the Journal of Vision, scientists demonstrate that the images formed by our eyes during reading lack the diversity of contrasts, luminance transients, visual motion, and visual change needed to activate major visual pathways signaling light stimuli, generally known as ON pathways (responsive to ‘light on’). The study compared the eye visual input and visuomotor activity generated by humans performing two visual tasks that are associated with different risk of myopia progression, reading (high risk) and walking (low risk). The results indicate that multiple factors including low light, low contrast, and the lack of self-motion make reading less effective at driving ON pathways than walking.