Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Kat Bako

Human Adaptation to Simulated Central Vision Loss

This summer, I’ll be conducting a study with the Sight Enhancement Lab at Berkeley that simulates the type of vision loss associated with macular degeneration, and tracks how human subjects with normal vision adapt to simulated central vision loss. We use a gaze-contingent display to present a gray circle on a computer monitor that moves with the subject’s eyes, thus blocking out visual information on the display according to where they are looking. Subjects wear a head-mounted binocular eye tracker that follows and records gaze positions continuously. Our interest is to track, over time, how humans adapt to central vision loss by adopting a preferred peripheral location as their new reference of vision.

Message To Sponsor

I am so grateful to those who donated to the summer URAP fellowship program. My summer was filled with enriching experiences and deepened my interest in research and optometry. Without this support, I would not have been able to stay in the Bay this summer to conduct clinical research in the Sight Enhancement Lab at Berkeley.
Major: Molecular Environmental Biology
Mentor: Susana Chung, School of Optometry
Sponsor: Chandra Research Fellows - Chandra Fund
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