Prolific Professor
By John Sanders
Ophthalmologist Professor Irene Gottlob has so many different nystagmus research projects and ideas that it’s easy to miss one out. Interviewing Irene for this article, I learnt that she’s about to start investigating how people with nystagmus read. That’s on top of all her other nystagmus work on genetics, drugs, prevalence and surgery, which almost certainly makes her the most prolific nystagmus researcher in the UK.
Looking at what strategies we use for reading means tackling some of the mysteries of congenital nystagmus. For example, if our eyes are moving all or most of the time why isn’t what we see moving too? The research project will consider how we use the null point when we’re reading and the importance of foveation (the very detailed part of our central vision). Irene has recruited a medical student to investigate how we read between now and May 2008. That probably won’t be long enough to come up with all the answers, but at least it will make a start.
Irene was born in Austria and has worked in Switzerland, the USA and the UK as well as her home country. She is now Head of the Ophthalmology Department at Leicester University and a medical adviser to NN. Her interest in nystagmus dates back to around 1989 before she came to work in Leicester. She first contacted NN in the late 1990s looking for volunteers to take part in research. Since then many of us have visited Irene and her colleagues at Leicester Royal Infirmary.
Without the support of people with nystagmus, Irene simply wouldn’t have made the progress she has with her research. “I couldn’t do it without them. A lot of people come from the NN web-page. It is extremely important. So I would really like to thank all the volunteers who have participated in our studies – genetics, pharmacological, prevalence, etcetera. That is very important for me.”
This is part of an article first published in autumn 2007 in the Nystagmus Network newsletter Focus. You are not allowed to reproduce this article or quote from it without the permission of the author.
To request the full article, please email the Nystagmus Network at info@nystagmusnet.org
© John Sanders, 2007
Email: John Sanders
Back to articles about nystagmus
EYESITE home page