What Drives Brain Changes In Macular Degeneration?
Thursday, March 12, 2009 - 14:40
in Health & Medicine
In macular degeneration, the most common form of adult blindness, patients progressively lose vision in the center of their visual field, depriving the corresponding part of the visual cortex of input. Previously, researchers discovered that the deprived neurons begin responding to visual input from another spot on the retina -- evidence of plasticity. Just how such plasticity occurred was unknown, but a new study sheds light on the underlying neural mechanism.