The Role of Visual Stimuli in Emmetropization and Myopia

描述(申请人提供)：此KO8奖项将允许拥有视觉科学硕士学位的验光师获得近视、正视和调节研究方面的专业知识和熟练程度。候选人的长期目标是在这一领域进行独立研究，并最终拥有自己的实验室。这项研究的长期目标是了解视觉刺激如何影响正视化过程，涉及哪些生化途径，这些信息如何与人类近视相关，以及人类调节系统是如何工作的。小鸡一直是获得关于正视化和近视发展信息最多的动物，因此是这项研究的最佳动物。对人类适应能力的研究可能提供对眼睛正视化过程的洞察，并为应试者提供研究人类适应能力的经验。需要学习的重要技能包括：创造照明视觉系统特定方面的刺激，使用屈光和超声波技术分析小鸡的眼睛生长，以及学习实验室技术来分析与视觉相关的生化途径。这些生化技术包括：蛋白质分析、高压液相色谱、离子交换层析、荧光素酶分析、DNA定量、细胞培养技术和解剖。在对人类受试者的研究中，申请人将学习建立、校准和维护用于监控注视和调节的光电系统，并创建计算机生成的图像刺激，探索驱动调节的视觉处理。KO8奖项还将帮助申请者准备通过一系列研究生课程成为一名独立研究人员，最终获得生物学博士学位，并专攻神经科学。这方面的工作包括：实验室工作，教授本科生，介绍并与同事讨论研究结果。这项有监督的研究计划将探讨以下问题：1)空间频率信息在正视化中扮演什么角色(通过对雏鸡眼镜的补偿研究进行实验探索)，2)鸡眼正视化和人类调节的时空特征能否通过使用动态随机噪声刺激来评估，3)维甲酸是否通过影响巩膜、脉络膜或两者共同参与正视化。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This KO8 award will allow an optometrist with a M.S. in vision science to obtain expertise and proficiency in research on myopia, emmetropization, and accommodation. The candidate's long-term goal is to do independent research in this field and eventually have his own laboratory. The long-term goals of the research are to understand how visual stimuli affect the emmetropization process, what biochemical pathways are involved, how this information relates to myopia in humans, as well as how the human accommodative system works. The chick has been the animal that has yielded the most information about emmetropization and myopia development, and is therefore the best animal for this research. The research on human accommodation may provide insight into the eye's emmetropization processes and to provide the candidate with experience studying accommodation in humans. Important skills to be learned will include: creating stimuli that illuminate particular aspects of the visual system, using refractive and ultrasound techniques to analyze the chicks' eye growth, and learning laboratory techniques to analyze the visually-related biochemical pathways. Among these biochemical techniques are: protein assays, high pressure liquid chromatography, ion exchange chromatography, luciferase assay, DNA quantitation, cell culture techniques, and dissection. In the studies on human subjects the applicant will learn to build, calibrate, and maintain electro-optical systems for monitoring fixation and accommodation and create computer generated images stimuli that explore the visual processing that drives accommodation. The KO8 award would also prepare the applicant to become an independent researcher through a series of graduate courses leading to a Ph.D. in Biology with a specialization in Neuroscience. This aspect of the work would include: laboratory work, teaching undergraduate students, and presenting and discussing research findings with colleagues. The supervised research plan will examine the following questions: 1 ) what role does spatial frequency information play in emmetropization (explored experimentally by studies of compensation for spectacle lenses in chicks), 2) can the spatio-temporal characteristics of chickemmetropization and human accommodation be evaluated by the use dynamic random noise stimuli, 3) does retinoic acid participate in emmetropization by influencing the sclera, the choroid, or both.