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Visual Acuity Research Paper

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What is visual acuity?
Visual acuity is commonly referred to as the clarity of vision and is dependent on both optical and neural factors, such as the sharpness of the retinal focus in the eye, the health of the retina, and the sensitivity of the brain. One aspect of visual acuity is the ability of recognizing and discriminating the colours of the visible spectrum of light. There are two types of cells involved in vision: rod cells and cone cells. Rod cells are highly sensitive cells that allow for low-acuity vision in dim lit environments, however they lack the detail and colour information. Cone cells are high-acuity cells that provide colour information in well-lit environments. Rod cells provide more convergence than the cone cells which results in their increased sensitivity but also results in the decreased acuity.
Physiology behind differences in visual acuity in men vs women
It is generally believed that woman have higher discriminatory abilities with respect to naming of colours, which often implies they have superior colour vision. It has been found in many studies that women perform better than men in the matching of colours from memory, and tend to use a plethora of different words to describe sets of colour stimuli. It is possible that there exists an underlying physiological explanation for why there should be …show more content…

This means that the separation of the colours (particularly red) will be affected depending on whether the serine or alanine pigment variants are expressed. It has been found that these variants can actually result in measured differences in spectral separation (Rodriguez-Carmona et al, 2008). In males which have a single X-chromosome approximately half will have the alanine L cone pigment and the other have will have the serine L cone pigment (Murray et al,

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