A study by a joint research team in Canada and New Zealand has found that abnormal vision in childhood can affect the development of higher-level brain areas responsible for things such as attention. The study has uncovered differences in how the brain processes visual information in patients with various types of lazy eye. This is among early evidence that the brain can divert attention away from a lazy eye when both eyes are open. Lazy eye, known as amblyopia, is a loss of vision that originates in the brain, typically when a child develops an eye turn (strabismic type) or a substantial difference in refractive error between the eyes (anisometropic type). The unequal input causes the brain to ignore information from the weaker eye during brain development. Conventionally, eye care practitioners have treated the different types of lazy eye similarly, primarily because the visual impairments experienced appeared to be the same. In light of this research, different treatment may be required. Strabismic amblyopia is a condition that can be corrected in childhood, but treatment efficacy can be highly variable. These findings are a stepping stone in developing better treatments of lazy eye. The study has been published in the journal Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science .
