Featured series 
Tag: eyes and sight
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Health
Light worsens migraine headaches
Normal 0 0 1 701 4001 33 8 4913 11.1282 0 0 0 Ask people who suffer from migraine headaches what they do when they’re having attacks, and you’re likely to hear “go into a dark room.” Although it’s long been known that light makes migraines worse, the reason why has been unclear. Now Harvard…
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Health
‘Super-recognizers’ never forget a face
Some people say they never forget a face, a claim now bolstered by psychologists at Harvard University who’ve discovered a group they call “super-recognizers”: those who can easily recognize someone they met in passing, even many years later. The new study suggests that skill in facial recognition might vary widely among humans. Previous research has…
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Health
Chylack and Dowling named ARVO Fellows
The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) has named Harvard Professor of Ophthalmology Leo T. Chylack Jr., and Gordon and Llura Gund Professor of Neurosciences John E. Dowling as 2009 fellows. Chylack and Dowling will receive their fellowships in May at the annual ARVO meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Both have been named…
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Health
Vitamin B and folic acid may reduce risk of age-related vision loss
Harvard Medical School (HMS) researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have found that taking a combination of vitamins B6 and B12 and folic acid appears to decrease the risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in women. This research is published today’s issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. “Women taking the supplements had a 34 percent…
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Campus & Community
When the blues keep you awake
Your eyes do more than see. Researchers at Harvard Medical School demonstrated this by showing that your eyes are part of a light reception system that can keep you alert when sleep starts to fog your brain. When the researchers exposed people to blue light at night, this system immediately increased their alertness and performance…
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Health
Bacterium present in eyes with ‘wet’ age-related macular degeneration
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in Americans over the age of 55. The majority of vision loss is due to neovascular AMD, the advanced form of the disease characterized by the formation of blood vessels in the macula, the center part of the eye’s retina. These blood vessels often leak,…
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Health
Dietary fat intake linked to dry eye syndrome in women
Dry eye syndrome is characterized by a decline in the quality or quantity of tears that normally bathe the eye to keep it moist and functioning well. The condition causes symptoms such as pain, irritation, dryness, and/or a sandy or gritty sensation. If untreated, severe dry eye syndrome can eventually lead to scarring or ulceration…
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Health
Study shows new compound may reduce risk of vision loss in patients with diabetes
The PKC-Diabetic Retinopathy Study (DRS) was designed to evaluate the safety and effect of an oral treatment, RBX, on retinopathy progression or visual loss in patients with moderately severe to very severe nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy. In the study, patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes received either RBX or a placebo over three to…
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Campus & Community
Lazy eyes aid artists, biologist says
Margaret Livingstone found herself in a small room at the Louvre museum in Paris with four self-portraits by Rembrandt. She noticed something strange. The eyes of the great 17th century artist are crooked. The eye on the right side of the painting looks straight at the viewer, but the other eye looks off to the…
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Campus & Community
Seeing seeing in action
Harvard Medical School researchers are seeing what seeing does to the brains of animals and making images that show for the first time single brain cells working together. The work, by Professor of Neurobiology Clay Reid and colleagues from Harvard Medical School, combines existing imaging techniques to create high-resolution movies of the working brain. Previous…
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Health
Accumulated low-level lead exposure can lead to cataract development in men
According to lead author Debra A. Schaumberg, Sc.D., O.D., M.P.H. of BWH, “This research suggests that reduction of lead exposure throughout a man’s lifetime should help reduce his chances of developing cataracts and of requiring cataract surgery. By preventing or delaying the onset of this condition, many instances of blindness worldwide could be prevented.” In…
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Health
Drugs are effective against eye disease
Results of two large international clinical trials have shown positive results using Macugen, an experimental treatment that targets the abnormal blood vessels found in the “wet” form of macular degeneration. The results, described in November 2003 at the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., demonstrated the drug’s ability to decrease vision loss.…
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Health
Hormone replacement therapy may lower degenerative eye disease risk in postmenopausal women
ARM is a degenerative eye disease that affects the macula, which is responsible for central vision, which is necessary for reading, driving and recognizing people’s faces. Advanced ARM is the leading cause of irreversible blindness among elderly individuals worldwide. Approximately 1.7 million people have decreased vision due to ARM, and 200,000 people develop advanced ARM…
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Health
Science illuminates art
Monet and other painters exploited the parallel visual processing of color and brightness. A sunset seems to shimmer, a field of poppies seems to wave, and a river seems to flow when there is a disconnect between the color and luminance pathways, according to a book, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, by Margaret…
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Health
Researchers eye earliest triggers of age-related macular degeneration
Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness for Americans over 60 years of age. It affects more than 14 million people. But how it attacks the macula, the center of the retina, is a controversial question. The macula is where the cones — the color and light sensing cells of the eye —…
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Health
Comprehensive set of vision genes discovered
Using a computer program that compares bits of genetic material taken from tissue in the retinas of mice against records in a huge genetic data base from the mouse and human genome project, Harvard Medical School researchers identified approximately 300 photoreceptor genes. That is five times the number of retinal genes that were previously known.…
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Health
Snack foods may increase risk of age-related sight loss
Macular degeneration results from the malfunctioning or loss of function of photo-sensitive cells in the retina. According to the Macular Degeneration Foundation, more than 13 million people in the United States are affected; a new case of adult macular degeneration is diagnosed in the U.S. every three minutes. A study in the August 2001 issue…
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Health
A familiar drug gives surprising hope against diabetic blindness
A common complication of diabetes is diabetic retinopathy, which can lead to blindness. Diabetic retinopathy is caused by changes in the blood vessels of the retina. This form of retinopathy has long been suspected of being the result of tiny blood clots in the capillaries of the eye that lead to blockages in blood circulation…
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Health
Brain hesitates in assembling mosaic of motion
Your brain must integrate information from many different neurons in the primary visual cortex to interpret movement. But how does this complicated process work? Richard Born and Christopher Pack of Harvard Medical School report that an area of the brain known as the middle temporal (MT) visual area has a dynamic solution to the problem…
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Health
Sights set on partial corneal transplants
“We don’t have any way of curing these problems,” says Nancy Joyce, a Harvard researcher who is working on saving people’s sight when their corneas deteriorate. “The only way right now is full corneal transplantation, healthy tissue and all. In our work, we’re trying to facilitate replacement of the diseased tissue only.” To do that,…