Dot Motion Perception in Young Adult Emmetropes and Myopes

Abstract

Central motion perception, as assessed by minimum displacement detection, was reduced by 25% in highly myopic eyes. Peripheral motion detection may be influenced by myopia, particularly in the inferior-nasal retina. Retinal stretching due to axial elongation may be linked to reduced performance in higher myopes.

Is Peripheral Motion Detection Affected by Myopia?

“…The correlations suggest the myopic impact on peripheral motion perception. This finding is consistent with a previous study in which Kuo et al (2018) used random-dot patterns to assess dot motion perception using Dmin, Dmax, and motion coherence tasks in both central and peripheral visual fields in young myopic and emmetropic adults. They also found that the Dmin threshold in the superior-temporal visual field was correlated positively with the axial length and negatively with the macular thickness of the corresponding retina, despite the fact that no difference was found between myopes and emmetropes, regardless of the tasks used, in the periphery.…”

“…The finding of the current study that correlations between myopia severity and the peripheral motion detection were mostly found in the nasal and superior visual field and only at 20 • , not 27 • , further suggested that the myopic influence on visual performance also varies across the whole visual field. This uneven distribution of the myopic impact in the visual field is also consistent with the finding in Kuo et al (2018) study that only in the superior-temporal visual field the correlations between Dmin task performance and myopia severity were significant. Besides, the correlation we found was mainly at low SF.…”

“… McKee and Nakayama (1984) found that correcting peripheral refractive errors in myopes did not improve the performance of differential motion perception tasks in the lower peripheral visual field. A recent study ( Kuo et al, 2018 ) assessed central and peripheral motion perception (at 3.65° and 12° eccentricities) using the random-dot paradigm also did not find significant differences in peripheral motion perception tasks including minimum displacement (Dmin), maximum displacement (Dmax), and motion coherence tasks between young myopic and emmetropic adults. However, they have found a small but significant correlation between the peripheral Dmin threshold in the superior-temporal visual field and the axial length, as well as the macular thickness of the corresponding inferior-nasal retina.…”

“…These studies have enriched our knowledge of the link between myopia and peripheral motion perception. However, considering that motion perception is influenced by a variety of factors, such as eccentricity ( Leibowitz et al, 1972 ; Rogers, 1972 ; Johnson and Leibowitz, 1974 ; Koenderink et al, 1978a , b ; McKee and Nakayama, 1984 ; van de Grind et al, 1987 ; Wesemann and Norcia, 1992 ), spatial frequency ( Koenderink et al, 1978a , b ; van de Grind et al, 1987 ; Boulton and Baker, 1991 ; Beard et al, 1997 ; Bex and Dakin, 2003 ; Lappin et al, 2009 ), speed ( Lagae et al, 1993 ; Lappin et al, 2009 ; Ananyev et al, 2019 ), and the area in the different visual fields ( Kuo et al, 2018 ), it remains unclear that whether myopia affects peripheral motion processing and if so, whether the potential effect varied with these factors. In this study, we directly addressed this issue by measuring the motion detection thresholds of gratings in a four-alternative forced-choice task in blocks of eccentricity, spatial frequency, and speed in young adults with low to high myopia and emmetropes.…”

Differential aging effects in motion perception tasks for central and peripheral vision

“…The RDK window was 800 pixels wide, with the intensity of the dots in an outermost annulus of 100 pixels width progressively reduced to the background intensity via a raised cosine envelope, to avoid participants guessing the direction of motion from the manner in which dots either appeared or disappeared. A longer viewing distance of 6 m (obtained by viewing using a mirror) was adopted to avoid floor effects, as was seen in younger participants in our pilot work with shorter distances, and as reported previously ( Kuo, Atchison, & Schmid, 2018 ). At 6 m, one pixel subtends a visual angle of 0.2 min of arc, providing a stimulus size of 3° of diameter, similar to that used previously by one of our research groups ( Lacherez, Au, & Wood, 2014 ; Lacherez, Turner, Lester, Burns, & Wood, 2014 ).…”