Journal of Comparative Neurology: Retinal Remodeling Triggered by Photoreceptor Degenerations

JCN cover 2003

Just published an article in The Journal of Comparative Neurology. This article, Retinal Remodeling Triggered by Photoreceptor Degenerations is the final third of my dissertation and represents a comprehensive analysis of late-stage retinal degenerative disease in human and 14 naturally occurring and engineered animal models. Essentially it shows that retinal remodeling is a common theme in retinal degenerative disease and regardless of the initial cause of disease, the final common pathway is the same; Retinas respond to deafferentation by migrating and likely rewiring their circuitries in response to lost input. This has huge implications for rescue of vision loss with bionic or biological means. We are not slamming the door on any approach to rescue. Rather all we are saying is that the problem is harder than initially thought and we have some biology to understand before jumping into implanting bionics or introducing biologicals into the eye of human patients.

 

 

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