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How Does Aging Process Impacts a Person's Eyesight and, in Particular the Human

Retina?

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How Does Aging Process Impacts a Person's Eyesight and, in Particular the Human

Retina?

A person’s eyesight deteriorates gradually with increasing age as every measure of the

visual function indicates a declining performance, such as decreased visual acuity and declining

contrast sensitivity. In middle age, the human eye develops presbyopia, where the eye lens

becomes less flexible and unable to focus on nearby objects. The lens clouds up, become less

pliable and force images to travel in a distorted medium, causing a diminished vision. At sixty

years and above, some individuals develop age-related conditions such as glaucoma and diabetic

retinopathy. The aging process declines a person’s optimal visual capability by causing

neurosensory retinal changes, macular degeneration such as apoptosis by retinal pigment

epithelium, and retinal anatomical changes that lead to deterioration of photoreceptors.

Increasing age causes neurosensory retinal changes such as neural cell loss, decreased

optic nerve axons and ganglion cells. According to Jorge et al. (2020), aging affects the structural

integrity of the retina concomitantly in healthy human beings as the corpora amylacea bodies

increases and the basement membrane thickens, leading to declining contrast sensitivity and

visual acuity. A study by Ach et al. (2020) to examine the impact of aging on cell loss in the

retina indicated that the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) undergoes considerable Neurol

reorganization through decreasing optic nerve axons and ganglion cell loss in response to retinal

changes caused by the aging process between the second and the sixth decade. Thus, retinal

pigment epithelial cells are vulnerable to loss as age increases.

The aging process causes macular degeneration, such as apoptosis, especially in people

who are sixty years and above. Macular degeneration caused by increasing age affects the

macular region in the retina, where cones and ganglion cells are dominant. Jaffe et al. (2019)
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determined that aging thickens macula and causes waning of cones and ganglion cells in the

central retina, which leads to reduced or blurred central vision. The authors added that

senescence of Bruch’s membrane and retinal pigment epithelial cells causes accumulation of

metabolic drusen and debris. Furthermore, ocular perfusion develops abnormalities that cause

dysfunction of the retinal pigment epithelial cells leading to apoptosis.

As human age increases, retinal anatomical changes occur that affect photoreceptors and

impairs vision. For instance, universal anatomical changes with visual health history are

attributable to visualization challenges during old age. The aging process causes an increase in

lipofuscin and dark adaptation threshold, leading to the displacement of convoluted rod outer

segment and nuclei with decreased photoreceptors (Bian et al., 2020). Aging causes the thinning

of the photoreceptor layer and thickens the layer between Bruch's membrane and retinal pigment

epithelium. Therefore, a significant age-related risk factor for retinal anatomical changes is the

thinning of photoreceptors which in turn causes visual impairment at old age.

In conclusion, the aging process causes human eyes to lack sufficient focusing power and

develop visual impairments. This decreasing visual function is caused by the changes in neural

elements such as the waning of retinal pigment epithelium and ganglion cells vital for the

integrity of cones and rods. Also, increasing age leads to retinal macular degeneration associated

with decreased photoreceptors, declining contrast sensitivity, basement membrane thickening,

and decreased visual acuity.

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References

Ach, T., Tarau, I. S., & Curcio, C. A. (2020). Retinal Pigment Epithelium in Health and Disease:

Maturation, Aging and Age-Related Macular Degeneration. In Retinal Pigment

Epithelium in Health and Disease (pp. 173-183). Springer, Cham.

Bian, B., Zhao, C., He, X., Gong, Y., Ren, C., Ge, L., ... & Yin, Z. Q. (2020). Exosomes derived

from neural progenitor cells preserve photoreceptors during retinal degeneration by

inactivating microglia. Journal of extracellular vesicles, 9(1), 1748931.

Jaffe, G. J., Ying, G. S., Toth, C. A., Daniel, E., Grunwald, J. E., Martin, D. F., ... & Comparison

of Age-related Macular Degeneration Treatments Trials Research Group. (2019).

Macular morphology and visual acuity in year five of the comparison of age-related

macular degeneration treatments trials. Ophthalmology, 126(2), 252-260.

Jorge, L., Canário, N., Quental, H., Bernardes, R., & Castelo-Branco, M. (2020). Is the retina a

mirror of the aging brain? Aging of neural retina layers and primary visual cortex across

the lifespan. Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 11, 360.