SUNY Optometry’s Graduate Center for Vision Research hosted its Research Open House Tuesday, October 30. The annual event introduces first-year OD students to the College’s research faculty and other current students with interests in translational or patient-based research.
This year’s speakers included Dr. Kevin Willeford, who will be a three-time alumnus of the College upon completion of his Ph.D. His research explores visual processes and psychological states with electrophysiological methods. Current OD/MS students Carol Lin, Brenda Tan and Chloe Keying Yan participated in a panel discussion and shared their research on anatomical changes to the retina in myopia development, the environmental effect of dim lighting on myopic progression, and digital eye strain, respectively.
Featured research poster topics included:
- Development of a protocol to perform behavioral measurements of accommodation response
- Quantification and distribution of co-localized astrocytes and capillaries in the inner retina, normative date for myopia
- Early diagnosis and potential treatment of inherited retinal disorders – exemplified by the ELM as a transient biomarker in early Stargardt disease
- Perceived location of a pre-pursuit target when pursuit direction is predictable versus unpredictable and the target location varies
- Functional organization of cortical maps for ocular dominance and light-dark polarity in primary visual cortex
- Human amblyopia increases perceptual dark dominance
- Over and covert visual attention are present in paralytic strabismics
- Critical flicker fusion frequency and digital eye strain
- Factors affecting the utility of a virtual reality supra-threshold visual field test
- Activity of visually-responsive superior colliculus neurons in a visual search task using naturalistic object categories
- The microRNA and mRNA profile of Muller glia after light damage
- Delayed blockade of retinal gap junction still offers neuroprotection in a mouse model of glaucoma
- Probing visual abnormalities in mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) patients