There might be a way to beat eye disease. Aging people are forced to adjust to macular degeneration (MD), which is an eye disease that's related to aging. This commentary talks about how people, who are going blind, have to adjust to their loss of vision; and it introduces a potential solution to the problem.
Aging people start losing their eyesight because neurons are affected. When neural input is disrupted, the brain can't discern visual input because the part of the eye related to the disease, the macula, becomes dysfunctional.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers, in a study published in the March 4, 2009 issue of Journal of Neuroscience; said they discovered that aging people must adjust to loss of vision with a unique technique, in order to see better; and the researchers related it to the way their brains process visual input.
Neurons apparently need to receive input. So, when usual visual information of aging people is disrupted, they are forced to respond with "the next best thing," according to a press release of MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research; by senior author Nancy Kanwisher.
Researchers discovered that when cells in the fovea, which is the part of the retina that's responsible for a person's central field of vision and it's the central part of the macular portion of the eye, degenerate; the brain forces undamaged neurons, attached to the degenerated section of the fovea on outer portions of the macula, to respond to stimuli by necessitating aging people with MD to tilt their heads.
The MIT researchers theorized that it's a kind of internal reorganization, and the brain forces aging people to adjust so their brains can interpret the visual map of the eye; rather than using the outer part of the eye, known as the cortex, to get information from other neurons.
Kanwisher said their study demonstrated that discernible changes in neural responses of aging people suffering from MD are probably forced by their brains, because of "the lack of input to a population of neurons," to adjust; rather than their brains changing the discernible visual information-processing method.
Macular degeneration is the most common disease related to adult blindness, and almost 2 million people are affected by it in the United States alone. Their brains force people to roll their eyes upward, so they can adjust to the lack of central vision. They exploit the preferred retinal locus (PRL), which is the undamaged area adjacent to and underneath the part of the retina affected by MD, by tilting the head.
Kanwisher said that MD is a great opportunity to understand more about flexibility in the eye cortex in aging adults. But it might be possible to beat the eye disease with simple eye drops.
The theory is that macular degeneration is linked to hardening of the lens in the eye, which creates the "lack of input to a population of neurons" that the MIT researchers mentioned in their study; and those neurons in the fovea of the macula, over time, degenerate. In other words, "If you don't use it, you lose it."
The brain must get visual input by any mean that it can get it. If lenses of the eyes become stiff and cloudy, thereby obstructing the necessary data that the brain requires; neurons of the fovea degenerate.
The brain forces people to tilt their heads to get the visual input that their brains desperately need, by using neurons adjacent to and underneath the neurons that are degenerated in the fovea, by accessing visual information through the cortex of the eye rather than trying to analyze data through ineffective eyeball lenses.
It's a horrible disadvantage to have to tilt the head just to get a blurry image. But people do what people must do; and people simply must be able to see, so their brains demand them to get visual information by whatever means is available.
There is a formula that has been tested for 10 years, which not only may impede macular degeneration and subsequent blindness; but it might beat presbyopia and MD altogether IF people use it early enough, and IF aging people have just enough faith to try it.
Blind Bartimaeus called out to the LORD; when Jesus was on his way, through Jericho, to bear the sins of the world on the cross, "Son of David, have mercy on me... If I could just have my vision, I'd be happy."Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; your faith has healed you."
Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God. When all the people saw it, they also praised God. (Luke 18:35-43)
How many aging people would be happy if they could only see again? Now, with the breakthrough revelation of this fantastic new product, people might be able to beat presbyopia and MD. People might not have to lose their vision just because they're in the aging process IF they can preserve elasticity in the lenses of their eyeballs.
Copyright by J. Michael Brown; January 7, 2011
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