WATERLOO SCIENTIST NEARING
CLINICAL TRAILS FOR POTENTIAL
'LAZY EYE' TREATMENT IN ADULTS
By Troy Patterson
“The goal for
me is to have an
evidence-based
approach that can
be used over the
longer term ...
By improving
vision, we can
protect against
vision loss for
a lifetime.”
Dr. Ben Thompson is working towards
a treatment for 'lazy eye' that has seen
no significant advancement in
modern times.
Thompson's work on low voltage
currents at the University of Waterloo
has revealed promising and repeatable
results in patients with amblyopia,
commonly known as lazy eye, using
low voltage currents via a electrodes
placed on the scalp.
A vision scientist and associate
professor at the School of Optometry
and Vision Science in the Faculty of
Science, Thompson is hopeful the
progress made in the study of lazy
eye will create long-term treatments
34 Optical Prism | October 2016
that can improve the quality of life in
adult patients, and prevent significant
vision loss over the lifetimes of patients.
Amblyopia increases a person's chance
of legal blindness by 50 per cent, and
can impact a patient's ability to conduct
manual dexterity tasks while limiting
employment opportunities, he said.
eye becomes long sighted. Thompson
said children with the condition have
been treated with a simple eye patch
for centuries, while adults have
remained untreatable because it was
thought “the mature brain no longer
has enough capacity for change.”
“The goal for me is to have an
evidence-based approach that can be
used over the longer term,” said
Thompson. “By improving vision, we
can protect against vision loss for a
lifetime.”
“Canada has a strong presence in the
brain stimulation field, but there are
not many studies related to vision,”
he said. “There are so many patients,
it really is a worldwide focus on these
tests. Our understanding is growing
well and we hope to build on that.”
Amblyopia originates in the brain
during childhood, often when a child
develops an eye turn, or when one
Since 2008 studies into the general
area of non-invasive brain stimulation
have been conducted using two