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from the eye-see-what-you-a-looking-at dept.
Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered a cell in the retina that may cause myopia when it dysfunctions. The dysfunction may be linked to the amount of time a child spends indoors and away from natural light.
"This discovery could lead to a new therapeutic target to control myopia," said Greg Schwartz, lead investigator and assistant professor of ophthalmology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
More than a billion people in the world have myopia, whose incidence is rising and is linked to how much time people spend indoors as children.
The newly discovered retinal cell -- which is highly sensitive to light -- controls how the eye grows and develops. If the cell instructs the eye to grow too long, images fail to be focused on the retina, causing nearsighted vision and a lifetime of corrective glasses or contact lenses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09 2017, @08:53PM
Yes it does. The ability for the eyes to grow adjusted to their surroundings improves the chances for that being to survive in its environment, so those creatures have a higher chance of passing on their genes for adaptable eyes than the creatures who couldn't see what they were doing.
That's exactly how evolution works.