Comment by walterbell
1 year ago
Show HN (Feb 2024) with browser plugin demo, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39484590
> There is a small neural network on the retina that tries to detect if the eye is far-sighted (most people are born far-sighted), and it is producing dopamine to slow or increase eye growth rate. It is not very smart, and if you do a lot of near-work it can think you are still hyperopic, causing further myopia progression. So, based on the refractive properties of the eye the software calculates the signal that would convince the retinal neural network that the eye is long enough, so it would produce dopamine, a known signal to stop axial eye growth. (based on myopic defocus LCA from the papers[2][3])
Refractify is the worlds first software to apply myopic defocus effect on the screen. Pre-clinical studies suggest that it may slow the progression of myopia or even prevent it. This makes the screen look on the retina naturally as if it was at a greater distance. This is possible because there are slight detectable differences in the statistical properties of the light depending on how far it is coming from due to Longitudinal Chromatic Aberration(LCA) and other effects. LCA simulation is being used in computer graphics since at least 2017 to enhance depth perception, but only recently has it gained research interest for its myopia prevention properties.
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-26323-7
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00144...
> if you do a lot of near-work it can think you are still hyperopic, causing further myopia progression.
Does this mean we should let our eyes see blurred images so our eyes would feel like they are seeing far away stuff and stop axial eye growth to stop myopia. This is in direct contrast to the claim in the post
> a few minutes a day with glasses or contact lenses that correct for blur stops the progression of myopia
which believes corrective lenses that correct for blur would stop the progression of myopia.
Note the references to color in the 2022 Nature paper:
> Here we show that, even though filtered movies looked similar, eyes became significantly shorter when the movie was sharp in the red plane but became longer when it was presented sharp in the blue plane. Strikingly, the eyes of young subjects who were already myopic did not respond at all—showing that their retina could no longer decode the sign of defocus based on LCA. Our findings resolve a long-standing question as to how the human retina detects the sign of defocus. It also suggests a new non-invasive strategy to inhibit early myopia development: keeping the red image plane on a computer screen sharp but low pass filtering the blue.
Okay that's great, except children get their myopia before they become casual laptop users.
I wonder if doing the same to TVs and tablets will do anything.
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