Modulation of mean luminance improves binocular balance across spatial frequencies in amblyopia

Seung Hyun Min; Yu Mao; Shijia Chen; Robert F Hess; Jiawei Zhou

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.104598

Modulation of mean luminance improves binocular balance across spatial frequencies in amblyopia

iScience. 2022 Jun 14;25(7):104598. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104598. eCollection 2022 Jul 15.

Authors

Seung Hyun Min^{1

2}, Yu Mao¹, Shijia Chen¹, Robert F Hess², Jiawei Zhou¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Ophthalmology and Optometry, Affiliated Eye Hospital, State Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology, Optometry and Vision Science, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China.
² McGill Vision Research, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.

Abstract

Amblyopia is a visual impairment that perturbs binocular balance at high spatial frequencies in favor of the fellow eye. Studies reveal that amblyopes who had been treated with monocular therapies still show imbalance. Binocular balance is achieved when both eyes' inputs are weighed equally. A reduced light can diminish the dimmed eye's weight in binocular combination. In this study, we examined if binocular balance across spatial frequencies could be improved by reducing the luminance of the fellow eye in adult amblyopes. By doing so, we relieved their binocular imbalance across spatial frequencies. Also, normal observers showed amblyopic binocular imbalance when the dominant eye's light level was dimmed. Therefore, reducing the luminance in the unaffected eye in amblyopia mitigated the binocular imbalance, whereas doing so in normal adults simulated the amblyopic imbalance across spatial frequencies.

Keywords: Biological sciences; Neuroscience; Sensory neuroscience.