Poor Eyesight Might Unfairly Mistaken For Brain Decline For Up To 25% Of Adults Over 50

Cognitive tests that rely on vision-dependent tasks could be skewing results for up to 25% of people aged over 50 who have undiagnosed visual problems such as cataracts or age-related macular degeneration (AMD). While AMD does not cause complete vision loss or affect cognition, it does impair people’s ability to read, drive, cook, and even recognize faces.

Using Fork in the Road Macular Degeneration simulator goggles and occlusion foils to simulate AMD, a group of study participants completed two cognitive tasks: a vision-dependent reaction time task and a vision-independent verbal fluency test. With the goggles . . .