Is Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS) an unintended consequence of Modern Teaching?

Computer usage is on the rise in the classroom, and its giving rise to an unintended consequence:  An increased risk of computer vision syndrome.

Students now have instant access to endless streams of information in multiple formats – video, text, music, anything.

Computers are a fixture in the classroom, as indicated by these statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics:

• In 2009, 97% of teachers had one or more computers located in the classroom every day.
• Internet access was available for 93% of computers in the classroom.
• The ratio of students to computers in the classroom was 5.3 to 1.
• Teachers reported that they or their students used computers in the classroom during instructional time (40%) or sometimes (29%).

Technology in the classroom, and at home, is exciting but it’s also resulting in Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS).

What is Computer Vision Syndrome?
CVS is eyestrain resulting from near work on the computer.  It can cause headaches, sore eyes, blurry vision, fatigue, and potentially even myopia (near-sightedness) among students.

An article in the Wall Street Journal cited a study by the National Institute of Occupational Safety, which indicates that CVS affects some 90% of the people who spend three hours or more per day at the computer.

That unintended consequence is the bad news of extended computer usage.  The good news is that visual problems can be offset if you practice good visual health while at the computer workstation.

As we noted in a previous post, there are techniques to help you avoid CVS.  These include:

• Sitting on a chair with feet flat on the floor and legs at a ninety-degree angle.
• Avoiding viewing computers screens, iPads, or smart phones while lying down on couch.  You should be upright and the screen should be straight ahead, not viewed at an angle.
• Using the Harmon Distance (the distance from the big knuckle on your middle finger to the tip of your elbow) when viewing a screen. Note that many people hold smart phones too close to their eyes - especially children. 
• Adjusting the level of brightness of your monitor for comfort.

Eye test detects sexual orientation

Although there was a popular belief that sexual orientation can be revealed by pupil dilation in response to attraction, there was no scientific evidence until now.

For the first time, researchers at Cornell University used a specialized infrared lens to measure pupillary changes to participants watching erotic videos.

Their findings are published August 3 in the journal PloS ONE.

Previous research explored these mechanisms either by simply asking people about their sexuality or by using such physiological measures as assessing their genital arousal. These methods, however, come with substantial problems.

“We wanted to find an alternative measure that would be an automatic indication of sexual orientation but without being as invasive as previous measures. Pupillary responses are exactly that,” says Gerulf Rieger, lead author and Cornell postdoctoral associate, who conducted the study with Ritch C. Savin-Williams, professor of human development and director of the Sex and Gender Lab.

“With this new technology, we are able to explore sexual orientation of people who would never participate in a study on genital arousal, such as people from traditional cultures,” says Rieger. “This will give us a much better understanding how sexuality is expressed across the planet.”

The new study adds considerably more to the field of sexuality research than just a new measurement, say the authors.

As expected, heterosexual men showed strong pupillary responses to sexual videos of women, and little to men; heterosexual women, however, showed pupillary responses to both sexes.

This result confirms previous research suggesting that women and men’s sexuality work differently.

Straight from the Source DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0040256

Dyslexia is a cognitive reading disorder

Reading is an incredibly complex skill that is required to learn efficiently as a child develops.

Educators, Professional scientists, psychologists and many other researchers agree there exists a population who have cognitive difficulty in learning to read, even if no other impairments exist like: seemingly low intelligence, delayed development of the senses or emotional problems.

Dyslexia is a cognitive, language processing issue, which can be divided into two groups: dyseidesia and dysphonesia.

Dyseidetics have poor sight recognition of words. They have to sound out words and read very slowly because it is difficult for them to visualize words, spelling words that look different from what they sound like is a challenge.

Dysphonetics have difficulty sounding out words. They may read at a normal rate, but make many substitution errors.

People who suffer from Dyslexia often have a blend of these and other subtypes of dyslexia.

Unfortunately, optometrists will insist that Dyslexia can be 'cured' with some form of 'corrective' lens. If only the solution was that simple.

Many who have a reading disability, including those who have dyslexia, do develop inefficient eye movements and focusing problems. Therefore, lenses, eye glasses and vision therapy can be prescribed as part of a larger multidisciplinary effort to improve their ability to read and learn but it is not the complete answer.

Nintendo Wii™ game controllers help diagnose eye disorder (ocular torticollis)

Nintendo Wii remotes are not all about fun and games.

Scientists can use them to assess and diagnose children with an abnormal head position caused by (ocular torticollis) eye diseases.

As described in a recent Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science article, researchers developed a low-cost digital head posture measuring device with Nintendo Wiimotes to help diagnose this condition, medically called ocular torticollis.

"Torticollis occurs in about 1.3% of children," said author, Jeong-Min Hwang, MD, of Seoul National University College of Medicine.

"Accurate measurement of the angle of the abnormal head position is crucial for evaluating disease progression and determining treatment or surgical plans in parties with ocular torticollis."

Hwang and his colleagues point out that in clinical practice where it can be difficult to get reliable data from children whose heads move constantly, a digital head posture measuring systems using electronic devices such as the motion tracking capability offered by Wiimotes would be an ideal alternative.

Below is an old (2008) YouTube video which helps to demonstrate the Wii head tracking technique.

The researchers used two Wii controllers to develop an infrared optical head tracker (IOHT) that automatically measures and records the angle of the head in real-time.

The remotes were connected to a monitoring computer with an infrared camera and Bluetooth connectivity.

The IOHT was evaluated for accuracy, validity and reliability by comparing it with the 'Cervical Range of Motion Instrument' or CROM device, one of the most widely used head posture measuring devices in hospitals.

Results demonstrated that in measuring the head posture of normal adult subjects, the measurement of the one-dimensional and three-dimensional (3-D) positions of a human head with IOHT were very close to those of CROM.

There were slightly more deviations of measurements between IOHT and CROM than the researchers expected in 3-D movement of the head, which the researchers contribute to the structural nature of CROM rather than inaccurate measurement of IOHT.

In looking at the future, the research team hopes this new tool will play a key role in diagnosing ophthalmic patients. "Considering its high performance, ease of use and low cost, we believe IOHT has the potential to be widely used as a head posture measuring device in clinical practice."

Playing Outdoors Helps Children see further

A new analysis of recent eye health studies shows that more time spent outdoors is related to reduced rates of nearsightedness, also known as myopia, in children and adolescents.

Myopia is much more common today in the United States and many other countries than it was in the 1970s. In parts of Asia, more than 80 percent of the population is nearsighted.

The analysis suggests that more exposure to natural light and/or time spent looking at distant objects may be key factors.

The analysis was led by Dr. Justin Sherwin of the University of Cambridge.

The data included in the analysis was drawn from eight carefully selected studies on outdoor time and myopia in children and adolescents, representing 10,400 participants in total.

Dr. Sherwin’s team concluded that for each additional hour spent outdoors per week, the chance of myopia dropped by approximately two percent.

Nearsighted children spent on average 3.7 fewer hours per week outdoors than those who either had normal vision or were farsighted.

Though the reasons aren’t yet clear, the protective effect appears to result from simply being outdoors rather than performing a specific activity.

Two of the eight studies examined whether children who spent more time outdoors were also those who spent less time performing near work, such as playing computer games or studying, but no such relationship was found in either study.

The amount of time spent on near work is of interest to researchers as another potential cause for the recent uptick in nearsightedness.

“Increasing children’s outdoor time could be a simple and cost-effective measure with important benefits for their vision and general health” said Dr. Khawaja.

“If we want to make clear recommendations, however, we’ll need more precise data. Future, prospective studies will help us understand which factors, such as increased use of distance vision, reduced use of near vision, natural ultra violet light exposure or physical activity, are most important.”

Dyslexia - photosensitive retinal ganglion cells

Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells and their projections (ipRGCs)
Photosensitive pigments located in the retina translate light into electrical activity.

Most photopigments are located in the retinal rods and cones, rather than in ganglion cells but recently it was discovered that some retinal ganglion cells are themselves photosensitive, the ipRGCs.

They respond most strongly to deep blue light (475 and 485 nm). The ipRGCs are spread diffusely forming a photoreceptive net that samples the whole retina. IpRGCs project strongly to the 'biological clock', the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus, which controls the body's diurnal rhythms.

This retinohypothalamic tract (RHT) input synchronises this clock to seasonally changing day length to maintain the correct phase relationship between daylight and the biological rhythms of endocrine, physiological and cognitive activity.

Dyslexia Research Trust - Vision & Coloured Filters

Are Educational Tools of Technology Damaging Your Child’s Eyesight?

Computers and three-dimensional (3D) imaging may be a big help to students academically, but almost one-third of parents are concerned that such devices are damaging their child’s eyesight.

The 2011 American Eye-Q survey from the American Optometric Association (AOA) indicates that 53 percent of respondents having children 18 or younger believe that 3D viewing can cause harm to a child’s vision or eyes, while 29 percent are highly concerned that their child may suffer damage to their eyes from prolonged use of computers or hand-held electronic devices.

Today, the majority of schools incorporate computers and 3D imaging as educational tools for students. While both are valuable teaching aids, in addition to being vital to a child’s academic success, many parents are worried that their children may experience eye damage from constantly using these modern marvels of technology.

According to the survey, 62 percent of parents surveyed estimated that their children spent from one to four hours daily using a computer, video game, mp3 player or hand-held electronic device.

According to James Sheedy, O.D., Ph.D., an AOA technology and vision expert, “Today’s classroom technology is extremely visual, making it critical for students to maintain excellent eye health.

Binocular vision, focusing abilities, as well as nearsightedness and farsightedness, should be checked by an eye doctor yearly, particularly as students head back to school.”

The steady use of the latest high-tech devices can cause students to experience a wide range of adverse effects that the AOA refers to as computer vision syndrome (CVS). Symptoms can include; fatigue, headaches, eye strain, neck pain, double or blurred vision, and tired or burning eyes.

To read the full article click here

Autism: Examining the Unsettling effect of a Stare or Fixed Gaze of eyes

They may seem a little unsettling but the staring eyes of this female avatar were designed to grab your gaze and hold it, and also to obligingly follow where you look. By performing these actions with people placed inside a brain scanner, she has helped to demonstrate that guiding the gazes of others activates different brain areas than following.

This could help unravel the brain activity underlying the process of "joint attention", thought to be key to complex, human social interactions. It could also offer insights into why social interactions can break down for people with autism.

Joint Attention
Joint attention – the ability and motivation to both guide and follow someone else's gaze – develops early in infants. It is considered necessary for complex social interactions, the learning of language and co-operation. For example, an eye signal from one person to another can indicate a potential meal, mate or menace.

In people with autism, joint attention seems to be abnormal, which may underpin some of the social difficulties they experience. Previously researchers have studied brain activity in people watching a video designed to engender a feeling of joint attention in the viewer. The new study is the first to separate out the processes of following and initiating joint attention.

Watch me watch her
Psychiatrist Leonhard Schilbach at the University of Cologne in Germany and his colleagues developed an avatar that can hold someone's gaze and an infrared camera that tracks the eye movement of someone watching the avatar. The system was set up inside an MRI scanner.

Then the team asked 21 healthy volunteers to use their eyes to guide the avatar's gaze towards a grey box projected on a computer screen, or to follow the avatar's gaze, while inside the scanner. The camera allows the researchers to determine when the volunteers are following the avatar's gaze and when the avatar is following theirs.

The real-time fMRI scans revealed that when the volunteers successfully got the avatar to follow their gaze, brain areas involved in reward and motivation were activated. When they followed the avatar's gaze, a different area of the brain, known to be involved in imagining what other people are thinking, was active. "It's kind of surprising that sharing something as basic as a grey square is something we enjoy," says Schilbach.

Get engaged
The finding is novel, says autism researcher Peter Mundy at the University of California, Davis, because previous studies of joint attention have not distinguished between initiating and responding.

It points to the possibility that differences in motivation to initiate joint attention "may be involved in the early social impairments of autism", he says.

Mundy adds that interactive avatars will be helpful in other areas of social psychology by allowing us to simulate social interactions and observe the neural systems they involve. "Our method is progress in the direction of studying things which stem from being engaged with another person," agrees Schilbach.

His team now plans to study the brains of people with autism as they interact with the avatar.

Journal reference: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2009.21401