AUTHOR=Wei Junhan , Kong Deying , Yu Xi , Wei Lili , Xiong Yue , Yang Adeline , Drobe Björn , Bao Jinhua , Zhou Jiawei , Gao Yi , He Zhifen 

TITLE=Is Peripheral Motion Detection Affected by Myopia?

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neuroscience

VOLUME=Volume 15 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2021.683153

DOI=10.3389/fnins.2021.683153

ISSN=1662-453X

ABSTRACT=Purpose: The current study was to investigate whether myopia affected peripheral motion detection and whether the potential effect interacted with spatial frequency, motion speed, or eccentricity.
Methods: Seventeen young adults aged 22 to 26 years participated in the study. They were six low to medium myopes (spherical equivalent refractions -1.0 to -5.0 D [diopter]), five high myopes (< -5.5 D) and six emmetropes (+0.5 to -0.5 D). All myopes were corrected by soft contact lenses. A four-alternative forced-choice task in which the subject was to determine the location of the moving grating from one of the four quadrants (superior, inferior, nasal, and temporal) of the visual field, was employed. The experiment was blocked by eccentricity (20º and 27º), spatial frequency of the grating (0.6, 1.2, 2.4 and 4.0 c/d for 20º eccentricity, and 0.6, 1.2, 2.0 and 3.2 c/d for 27º eccentricity), as well as the motion speed (2 d/s and 6 d/s). 
Results: Mixed-model ANOVAs showed no significant difference in the thresholds of peripheral motion detection between three refractive groups at either 20º (F [2,14] = 0.145, p = 0.866) or 27º (F [2,14] = 0.475, p = 0.632). At 20º, lower motion detection thresholds were associated with higher myopia (p < 0.05) mostly for low spatial frequency and high-speed targets in the nasal and superior quadrants, and for high spatial frequency and high-speed targets in the temporal quadrant in myopic viewers. Whereas at 27º, no significant correlation was found between the spherical equivalent and the peripheral motion detection threshold under all conditions (all p > 0.1). Spatial frequency, speed, and quadrant of the visual field all showed significant effect on the peripheral motion detection threshold. 
Conclusions: There was no significant difference between the three refractive groups in peripheral motion detection. However, lower motion detection thresholds were associated with higher myopia, mostly for low spatial frequency target, at 20º in myopic viewers.