Eyes are to view objects, however , it is not a born in ability. Our eyes have to learn how to function. The infancy period is a formative time when the infant’s neurological system is very flexible, and can easily adapt to changing environment stimuli. It is during such a period of time our eyes get visual stimuli and learn how to view. If any one of the eyes can not get adequate visual stimuli, amblyopia eye or lazy eye that we usually refer to could be developed. Amblyopia is a kind of eye disease whose symptom is reduced vision.
As one grows when his/her flexibility of the visual system decreases, it hard for him/her to improve the eyesight dramatically. In the past, the doctor would advise the patients to let the lazy eye work harder by patching the better eye, so that the visual function of the lazy eye can be stimulated. Nevertheless, if the patient is young enough, it may in some degree works. that is to say, it serves little when one reaches a certain age. Vision Therapy(VT) is also applied to retrain the visual system to function correctly. Most people would get their vision improved as long as VT is done properly.
Recently, researches find that the antidepressant medication Prozac is able to restate ocular dominance plasticity in adulthood. Such a discovery brings hopes to older individuals who want to promote their visual impairment, resulted from lazy eyes. Such an issue has ever been published in the Science Magazine, reading that Prozac, a kind of antidepressant medication reopens the critical period of plasticity in the visual cortex, and Lateral Geniculate Body parts of the brain. The Prozac achieves it by reorganizing the neuronal connections in the cortex. In the Magazine, the researches have also explained the possible side effect of Prozac’s performance in lazy eye treatment. They should be originated from the long use of drugs, including suicide, severe anxiety, glaucoma and visual filed defects.
Up to now, this study has been only proved to effective in the rats experiments, so further experiments on human being should be done to make sure its effectiveness. Therefore , long term research needs to be done to determine the risk and benefits of such treatment, and improved should be necessarily made.
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