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- Congenital cataracts are the leading cause of treatable blindness in children worldwide. In countries where surgery is common, surgery is performed in infancy, and the prognosis for recovery of visual function is good.
- It is widely believed that the window for surgical intervention in congenital cataracts closes when children are 6 to 8 years old, because that is a critical period for visual brain development. The benefits of restoring visual input later in life are generally thought to be limited because the brain lacks sufficient plasticity to adapt and utilize input from the eyes.
Abu Dhabi, UAE: A team of NYU Abu Dhabi researchers, led by Bas Rokers, director of the NYU Center for Neuroimaging, has studied brain changes that can improve visual skills. Investigators are working with Project Prakash, a combined humanitarian and scientific effort to restore sight to children with curable blindness in rural India. They found that improvements in visual function were associated with changes in white matter pathways, which connect neurons in different brain regions.
They looked at many pathways, but only those involved in higher-level visual functions, such as facial recognition, were directly associated with improved vision. In addition, the researchers found that the amount of changes in the patient’s late visual pathways, specifically the posterior callosal pincer, predicted the degree of behavioral improvement. This is a new result that pinpoints the location of the brain changes responsible for behavioral improvement.
in the title White matter plasticity after cataract surgery in congenitally blind patients published in a magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)the researchers also demonstrated that the impact on visual function and brain plasticity was greater if cataract surgery was performed at a young age, but recovery was still possible even when eye surgery was performed in late adolescence.
The results suggest that puberty remains sufficient plasticity after a critical period of visual development to allow patients to partially overcome abnormal visual development and help localize neural changes for recovery in blind adolescents. Thus, there exists a wider time window than previously thought during which vision restoration surgery can improve visual perception by altering structural brain plasticity. The team’s research elucidates the definition of sites of neural change associated with vision restoration, which could guide the development of treatments that attempt to induce neuroplasticity through behavioral and surgical interventions.
“The new insights discovered by our team challenge the recognized limitations of vision restoration surgery, creating opportunities for expanded use of these procedures that will make more cases of blindness treatable around the world,” Rokers said. “Our work also provides evidence to support calls for the scientific community to reassess the critical period of visual development in adolescents.”
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About NYU Abu Dhabi
NYU Abu Dhabi is the Middle East’s first comprehensive liberal arts and research campus operated overseas by a major American research university. NYU Abu Dhabi combines a highly selective program with majors in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, arts and humanities, and features a world-class center for advanced study. Its campuses equip students to succeed in an increasingly interdependent world and drive collaboration and progress to address humanity’s shared challenges. NYU Abu Dhabi’s top students come from some 125 countries and speak more than 100 languages. Together, NYU’s campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi and Shanghai form the backbone of a unique global university, offering faculty and students the opportunity to experience different learning environments and Opportunities to immerse yourself in other cultures on six continents.
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