Nystagmus is a common retinal disease that manifests in two ways: an involuntary sideways wiggling of the eyes and, more insidiously, the obliteration of a reflex needed to track horizontal movement. As a result, patients’ gazes range from slightly unsteady to so turbulent that they are considered legally blind. For example, a person’s eyes normally lock onto and follow moving objects—say, the passing scenery through a train window. But for a nystagmus patient, this view is a hopelessly unrecognizable blur.
The cause of this condition is unknown, but a group at the FMI recently traced the condition back to a glitch in how the retina computes sideways motion.
Read more in my latest NERD post.
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Image courtesy of Susanne E Hausselt, Thomas Euler, Peter B Detwiler, Winfried Denk [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons