Most eyes start with a hypermetropic refractive error at birth, but the growth rates of the ocular components, guided by visual cues, will slow in such a way that this refractive error decreases during the first 2 years of life. Once reaching its target, the eye enters a period of stable refractive error as it continues to grow by balancing the loss in corneal and lens power with the axial elongation. Although these basic ideas were first proposed over a century ago by Straub, the exact details on the controlling mechanism and the growth process remained elusive. Thanks to the observations collected in the last 40 years in both animals and humans, we are now beginning to get an understanding how environmental and behavioral factors stabilize or disrupt ocular growth. We survey these efforts to present what is currently known regarding the regulation of ocular growth rates.
Keywords: Emmetropization; animal model; ocular growth; refractive development; refractive error.
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