Dr. Kimberly Meier from University of Washington awarded $65,000 Knights Templar Eye Foundation Grant for Amblyopia Research

Dr. Kimberly Meier from the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington was awarded a $65,000 grant for the research entitled: Neural bases of binocular contrast integration in children with amblyopia

Poor vision in one eye (for example, blurry vision or an eye turn) for a long period of time during early childhood often results in amblyopia (also known as lazy eye). The brain learns to ignore the input of one eye, so the child continues to have poor vision in that eye, even after the initial cause of poor vision is fixed.

Amblyopia is treated by having the child wear a patch over the good eye for about two hours per day– forcing the brain to use the poor eye. However, children universally dislike wearing a patch, treatment for amblyopia does not work for all children, and vision often slowly deteriorates once treatment has ended. New treatments for amblyopia have recently been developed that involve playing specialized video games, but like traditional patching, these treatments only work for some children. One possible reason for this variety of outcomes is that multiple different neural deficits contribute to the poor vision of amblyopia, and these can differ across children.

Over the last year, Dr. Meier has successfully developed a way of quickly measuring the specific neural deficits that underlies an individual’s poor vision. She plans to use this same task in children, while recording brain responses over time. Her long-term aim is to develop a way of measuring brain responses in young pre-verbal children. Once they know a child’s specific neural deficits, clinicians can generate individualized treatments that target his or her specific pattern of neural abnormalities – resulting in faster and better treatment.