If you have trouble reading the fine print on a restaurant menu, a team of scientists - including Dr. Melvyn Goodale, Canada Research Chair in Visual Neuroscience at Western University - have come up with a simple solution. By staring at a flickering image for several seconds, then looking at the fine print again, the text will be less blurry for a period of time. This is based on the knowledge that there are two major pathways that carry information from the eyes to the brain. One pathway is fast and carries more coarse information, including movement; the other is slow and carries finer detail such as text. By looking at the flickering image, the fast, coarse pathway becomes tired and allows the slow, fine detail pathway to take over, therefore improving acuity for reading words on a page.

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