6 ms·

For several decades it has been known that myopia (nearsightedness) and intelligence are correlated[1][2]. Initially it was speculated that reading caused nears

For several decades it has been known that myopia (nearsightedness) and intelligence are correlated[1][2]. Initially it was speculated that reading caused nearsightedness, and through that higher intelligence. There is probably some truth to that. But with modern DNA sequencing techniques researches has found genes that seem to affect both[3][4]. The hypothesis is that one (or a set of) genes affects both eye size growth (myopia is often caused by the eye being "too long") and neocortical size (associated with intelligence). Although this probably won't surprise anyone in this research field, I recently read about it -- with my non-nearsighted eyes :) -- and found it interesting. So I wanted to share, since it's somewhat related to this topic. [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/article-abstract/636970 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/article-a... [2] https://europepmc.org/article/med/2904062 https://europepmc.org/article/med/2904062 [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep45977 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep45977 [4] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19127804/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19127804/

bstar77 4y ago
And here I am thinking my perfect eyesight at 45 is a good thing :(
viktoracoric 4y ago
- EnKopVand 4y ago
  The beauty of science is that you don’t have to “believe” in it.
  - volfied 4y ago
    The beauty of science is that you don't "blindly believe" in it.
    - Izkata 4y ago
      Plenty of people do blindly believe it (hence the catchphrase "believe science"). Best to combine your two statements: you don't have to "blindly believe" in it.
    - EnKopVand 4y ago
      Well obviously, but that is not the counterpoint to what I was saying at all. If you see science that you don’t “believe” is true, then you need to do science to show us it isn’t true before speaking out about it. Maybe not everywhere, but at least here on HN people still prefer to take reason and proof over anecdotal stories from your undocumented and limited experiences. Please note that I don’t mean to say your anecdotal experiences can’t be interesting, just that they can’t be used as science until you do the work to actually prove that they aren’t just your experiences.
      - viktoracoric 4y ago
        Well if scientific paper contradicts the observable experiences from the real world, then obviously something went wrong during the experiment. And you still believe in this paper because you didn't reproduce it yourself or you didn't see it being reproduced step-by-step in real life, you rely on this scientist who conducted the experiment reporting it legitimately and other scientists involved in peer review process to have actually read the paper and verified it through reproduction (which isn't all too common in academia btw.)
- zackees 4y ago
  This. I realized that it wasn’t necessarily genetic I may just have my monitor too close. I swapped it for a 70inch 4k monitor/tv six feet away and my eyesight improved by a quarter point over the next year.
- yial 4y ago
  Number 3 is interesting , it’s a twin study. I still have to read more, but their best fit model has the same p value as storks delivering babies, if that helps you. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227763292_Storks_Deliver_Babies_p_0008 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227763292_Storks_De... Edit: I do wonder how some recent studies on myopia fit in with these other findings: “ The decrease in heritability and the increased myopia prevalence in our sample may not be related to the age of the sample, but with the year of birth and the changes in the environment in what these subjects developed during the last two decades. Due to the higher academic skills of our study population, it can be considered that they have been highly exposed to one of the myopia risks factors related to abuse of near work and large periods exposed to low luminance environments11,19,20. Many studies showed an increasing trend of myopia incidence as we are approaching the era of modern industrialization along with increasing education level3,11,19,20. The older twin sample34 had in average a lower education level and possibly less prolonged near task. This may signify the connection of these trends with our obtained results with greater environmental influence on refractive error variance among studied millennials. The change in myopia prevalence is happening across the last few decades, where the increased offset cannot be explained by a change on genetic factors, as genetic evolution cannot take place in such short time span. On the other hand, less than 10% of the variance of refraction could be accounted for Genome-wide studies, where studies have identified, so far, more than 150 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with myopia44. Alternatively, the high heritability of refractive error observed in most of the twin studies can be a result of heritability overestimation by the classical twin study model. From any perspective, we must understand that heritability is the combined result of genotype and environment on a certain phenotypic trait. Hence, it appears that the sudden increase in myopia prevalence is a result of higher interaction with the environment.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65130-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65130-w
- nend 4y ago
  That's the cool thing about science, it can't be refuted by one person's anecdotal experiences.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    Science is the adaptive theoretical system digesting anomalies.
zamiaf 4y ago
The issue with these types of studies though is that there's no way to really parse out correlation vs causation, either between these two variables or with social factors at large. Especially in this case there was no molecular work done to validate the hits or establish causal pleiotropic effects. The authors are incentivized to tell a story but as readers I think we can be a little more skeptical and evaluate the likelihood of those kinds of claims (there's positive selection on genes that both increase "intelligence" and alter eye shape) versus like, environmental and social factors induce a correlation between needing glasses and reading...
- yial 4y ago
  I agree with this… I don’t think other studies on myopia fit this same narrative. (However I may be wrong!) Example: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65130-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65130-w
nickbauman 4y ago
I thought the increase in nearsightedness originated in kids not playing outside as much (and thereby not focusing their eyes over longer distances) resulting in eyesight that's more attuned to shorter distances.
- dsego 4y ago
  I've read that the amount of natural light is important, and that the light inside buildings and houses is not sufficient. Children should spend more hours outside.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    If you have a light meter (on a camera or phone or standalone) it’s amazing how “dim” even the brightest indoor lights are. Full flood wash on a stage is nothing compared to the power of the sun.
    - wlesieutre 4y ago
      Some example values here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux#Illuminance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux#Illuminance Office lighting: 250-500 Direct sunlight: 32,000-100,000
- delecti 4y ago
  At least if wikipedia's summary is to be believed, that's one of the less supported of many potential theories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myopia#Environmental_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myopia#Environmental_factors Their summary seems to suggest that the biggest factor is exposure to daylight. So then even reading outside ought theoretically protect against nearsightedness.
  - sumy23 4y ago
    > People, and children especially, who spend more time doing physical exercise and outdoor play have lower rates of myopia,[30][29][31][32][33] suggesting the increased magnitude and complexity of the visual stimuli encountered during these types of activities decrease myopic progression. There is preliminary evidence that the protective effect of outdoor activities on the development of myopia is due, at least in part, to the effect of long hours of exposure to daylight on the production and the release of retinal dopamine. That sounds like a fair bit of support to me.
d0mine 4y ago
This should be easy to answer: we are not smarter in the recent decades (the opposite is likely true due to the leaded petrol). The natural selection for smartness is too weak in humans (it does not take much brain to reproduce nowadays). The hypothesis in TFA is much more likely (regular exposure to bright daylight in children)
- delecti 4y ago
  On the contrary, IQ has been increasing decade-over-decade basically since IQ was invented. So we are smarter in recent decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect (Though because IQ is standardized around a mean of 100, it's probably more accurate to say that the IQ of people in the past has retroactively gotten lower)
  - d0mine 4y ago
    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2311082-leaded-petrol-may-have-lowered-the-iq-of-over-half-the-us-population/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2311082-leaded-petrol-m...
    - delecti 4y ago
      The flynn effect is well documented. The negative effect of leaded gas on intelligence just means that average IQ "should" have been raising even more throughout the 20th century.
  - ByteJockey 4y ago
    It's considered to have ended (and possibly started reversing) in developed countries starting in the mid 1990s. Your link even covers it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Possible_end_of_progression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Possible_end_of_p...
JoBrad 4y ago
The last study says “myopic children regardless of their IQ gain better school achievement”. This makes me think the difference is cultural vs genetic.
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  Does it mean they are more obedient? Not meaning that as a put down, but being good in school has a lot to do with behavior.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    I think it's more likely that people treat people who wear glasses like they're smarter, and they feel pressure to live up to that.
    - dymk 4y ago
      Wearing glasses certainly shaped my hobbies - more reading and computer time. On top of that, being nearsighted (pre glasses) made it hard to catch a ball, so less time spent doing sports.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
aaron695 4y ago
adverbly 4y ago
I heard somewhere that the speculation was that the cerebral cortex is physically next to your eyes, so a big brain stunts your eyes... anyone know if there was any truth to that?
abledon 4y ago
> For several decades it has been known that myopia (nearsightedness) and intelligence are correlated[1][2]. Funny, this was also documented in sanskrit medical texts

bstar77 4y ago

And here I am thinking my perfect eyesight at 45 is a good thing :(

viktoracoric 4y ago

EnKopVand 4y ago
The beauty of science is that you don’t have to “believe” in it.
- volfied 4y ago
  The beauty of science is that you don't "blindly believe" in it.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    Plenty of people do blindly believe it (hence the catchphrase "believe science"). Best to combine your two statements: you don't have to "blindly believe" in it.
  - EnKopVand 4y ago
    Well obviously, but that is not the counterpoint to what I was saying at all. If you see science that you don’t “believe” is true, then you need to do science to show us it isn’t true before speaking out about it. Maybe not everywhere, but at least here on HN people still prefer to take reason and proof over anecdotal stories from your undocumented and limited experiences. Please note that I don’t mean to say your anecdotal experiences can’t be interesting, just that they can’t be used as science until you do the work to actually prove that they aren’t just your experiences.
    - viktoracoric 4y ago
      Well if scientific paper contradicts the observable experiences from the real world, then obviously something went wrong during the experiment. And you still believe in this paper because you didn't reproduce it yourself or you didn't see it being reproduced step-by-step in real life, you rely on this scientist who conducted the experiment reporting it legitimately and other scientists involved in peer review process to have actually read the paper and verified it through reproduction (which isn't all too common in academia btw.)
zackees 4y ago
This. I realized that it wasn’t necessarily genetic I may just have my monitor too close. I swapped it for a 70inch 4k monitor/tv six feet away and my eyesight improved by a quarter point over the next year.
yial 4y ago
Number 3 is interesting , it’s a twin study. I still have to read more, but their best fit model has the same p value as storks delivering babies, if that helps you. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227763292_Storks_Deliver_Babies_p_0008 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227763292_Storks_De... Edit: I do wonder how some recent studies on myopia fit in with these other findings: “ The decrease in heritability and the increased myopia prevalence in our sample may not be related to the age of the sample, but with the year of birth and the changes in the environment in what these subjects developed during the last two decades. Due to the higher academic skills of our study population, it can be considered that they have been highly exposed to one of the myopia risks factors related to abuse of near work and large periods exposed to low luminance environments11,19,20. Many studies showed an increasing trend of myopia incidence as we are approaching the era of modern industrialization along with increasing education level3,11,19,20. The older twin sample34 had in average a lower education level and possibly less prolonged near task. This may signify the connection of these trends with our obtained results with greater environmental influence on refractive error variance among studied millennials. The change in myopia prevalence is happening across the last few decades, where the increased offset cannot be explained by a change on genetic factors, as genetic evolution cannot take place in such short time span. On the other hand, less than 10% of the variance of refraction could be accounted for Genome-wide studies, where studies have identified, so far, more than 150 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with myopia44. Alternatively, the high heritability of refractive error observed in most of the twin studies can be a result of heritability overestimation by the classical twin study model. From any perspective, we must understand that heritability is the combined result of genotype and environment on a certain phenotypic trait. Hence, it appears that the sudden increase in myopia prevalence is a result of higher interaction with the environment.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65130-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65130-w
nend 4y ago
That's the cool thing about science, it can't be refuted by one person's anecdotal experiences.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  Science is the adaptive theoretical system digesting anomalies.

zamiaf 4y ago

The issue with these types of studies though is that there's no way to really parse out correlation vs causation, either between these two variables or with social factors at large. Especially in this case there was no molecular work done to validate the hits or establish causal pleiotropic effects. The authors are incentivized to tell a story but as readers I think we can be a little more skeptical and evaluate the likelihood of those kinds of claims (there's positive selection on genes that both increase "intelligence" and alter eye shape) versus like, environmental and social factors induce a correlation between needing glasses and reading...

yial 4y ago
I agree with this… I don’t think other studies on myopia fit this same narrative. (However I may be wrong!) Example: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65130-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65130-w

nickbauman 4y ago

I thought the increase in nearsightedness originated in kids not playing outside as much (and thereby not focusing their eyes over longer distances) resulting in eyesight that's more attuned to shorter distances.

dsego 4y ago
I've read that the amount of natural light is important, and that the light inside buildings and houses is not sufficient. Children should spend more hours outside.
- bombcar 4y ago
  If you have a light meter (on a camera or phone or standalone) it’s amazing how “dim” even the brightest indoor lights are. Full flood wash on a stage is nothing compared to the power of the sun.
  - wlesieutre 4y ago
    Some example values here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux#Illuminance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux#Illuminance Office lighting: 250-500 Direct sunlight: 32,000-100,000
delecti 4y ago
At least if wikipedia's summary is to be believed, that's one of the less supported of many potential theories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myopia#Environmental_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myopia#Environmental_factors Their summary seems to suggest that the biggest factor is exposure to daylight. So then even reading outside ought theoretically protect against nearsightedness.
- sumy23 4y ago
  > People, and children especially, who spend more time doing physical exercise and outdoor play have lower rates of myopia,[30][29][31][32][33] suggesting the increased magnitude and complexity of the visual stimuli encountered during these types of activities decrease myopic progression. There is preliminary evidence that the protective effect of outdoor activities on the development of myopia is due, at least in part, to the effect of long hours of exposure to daylight on the production and the release of retinal dopamine. That sounds like a fair bit of support to me.

d0mine 4y ago

This should be easy to answer: we are not smarter in the recent decades (the opposite is likely true due to the leaded petrol). The natural selection for smartness is too weak in humans (it does not take much brain to reproduce nowadays). The hypothesis in TFA is much more likely (regular exposure to bright daylight in children)

delecti 4y ago
On the contrary, IQ has been increasing decade-over-decade basically since IQ was invented. So we are smarter in recent decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect (Though because IQ is standardized around a mean of 100, it's probably more accurate to say that the IQ of people in the past has retroactively gotten lower)
- d0mine 4y ago
  https://www.newscientist.com/article/2311082-leaded-petrol-may-have-lowered-the-iq-of-over-half-the-us-population/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2311082-leaded-petrol-m...
  - delecti 4y ago
    The flynn effect is well documented. The negative effect of leaded gas on intelligence just means that average IQ "should" have been raising even more throughout the 20th century.
- ByteJockey 4y ago
  It's considered to have ended (and possibly started reversing) in developed countries starting in the mid 1990s. Your link even covers it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Possible_end_of_progression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Possible_end_of_p...

JoBrad 4y ago

The last study says “myopic children regardless of their IQ gain better school achievement”. This makes me think the difference is cultural vs genetic.

FollowingTheDao 4y ago
Does it mean they are more obedient? Not meaning that as a put down, but being good in school has a lot to do with behavior.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  I think it's more likely that people treat people who wear glasses like they're smarter, and they feel pressure to live up to that.
  - dymk 4y ago
    Wearing glasses certainly shaped my hobbies - more reading and computer time. On top of that, being nearsighted (pre glasses) made it hard to catch a ball, so less time spent doing sports.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

aaron695 4y ago

adverbly 4y ago

I heard somewhere that the speculation was that the cerebral cortex is physically next to your eyes, so a big brain stunts your eyes... anyone know if there was any truth to that?

abledon 4y ago

> For several decades it has been known that myopia (nearsightedness) and intelligence are correlated[1][2]. Funny, this was also documented in sanskrit medical texts