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161 EW IN OTHER NEWS by Ellen Stodola EyeWorld Staff Writer in medical school, Dr. Thevi didn't have a piano to play, but she would be asked to play by her friends at parties. In addition to playing the piano, Dr. Thevi has experience Dr. Thevi makes time for her musical passion as well as practicing ophthalmology T hevi Thanigasalam, MD, Pahang, Malaysia, has been playing the piano since she was 4 years old. The Malay- sian ophthalmologist chose medicine over music when she was just 14-years-old and has only recently gotten back into playing the piano. Dr. Thevi (as she is known by her patients), spoke with EyeWorld about her interest in the piano, as well as singing and dance. She also discussed her current involvement and how it fits in with her career practicing as a general ophthalmol- ogist at a government hospital in Malaysia. Beginning her musical career Dr. Thevi's first piano performance was at the age of 5 in kindergar- ten. At the age of 14, she received a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in the U.K., as well as one to the International College of Music in Malaysia. However, Dr. Thevi decided to give both of these up to pursue a career in medicine; she had decided at a young age that she wanted to be a doctor. "At that point, I had to make a major decision in life regarding my career and whether I wanted to do music or medicine," she said. "I didn't have any parental pressure. It was left entirely to me. At the age of 14, I had to make that decision." Her music teachers, she said, refused to accept that she was giving up music because of her remarkable talent and were convinced that she had been pressured to choose medicine. While in singing, for which she has won numerous awards, and dance. She has studied ballet, classical, modern, October 2015 Malaysian ophthalmologist revives interest in piano Dr. Thevi at her piano prior to a concert. After a long break from music, she began to play again about 5 years ago. Source: Thevi Thanigasalam, MD In the news Research shows that humans can 'train' their eyes to make their blind spot smaller A new method shows potential for improving vision in patients with macular disease by Lauren Lipuma EyeWorld Staff Writer T he physiological blind spot where the optic nerve enters the retina can never disappear, but new research shows that humans can effectively "shrink" the size of their blind spots through visual training. The research, published in the journal Current Biology, showed that humans can increase the sensitivity of photoreceptors at the periphery of the blind spot, leading to about a 10% reduction in functional blindness, according to a press release from Cell Press. Researchers at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Austra- lia, trained 10 participants for 20 consecutive weekdays on a direction -discrimination task in which they were presented with a sinusoidal wave in a circle centered on the physiological blind spot in one of their eyes. The size of the circle was adjusted such that participants could correctly gauge the direction of the wave's movement about 70% of the time. At the end of the training session, participants showed improve- ments in the ability to gauge the direction and the color of the wave. Training on one eye did not transfer to visual improvements in the fellow eye, suggesting that the improvements weren't due to prac- ticing the task. The researchers tracked participants' eye movements during training to rule out the possibility of those movements affect- ing the results. The researchers theorize that after training, the neurons sur- rounding the blind spot became more sensitive to weak light signals coming from the region of the blind spot. If this training works with the physiological blind spot, the researchers said, it could work to reduce blindness due to disease, such as from age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Used in conjunction with other therapies and technologies, these training exercises could help patients with AMD recover some of their vision loss. Paul Miller, the study's lead author, said in the press release that the research team plans to optimize the training protocol in healthy individuals and then test it in patients with AMD. EW Reference Miller PA, Wallis G, Bex PJ, Arnold DH. Reducing the size of the human physiological blind spot through training. Curr Biol. 2015 Aug 31;25(17):R747–8. continued on page 162

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