QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF AGING PRIMATE RETINA

灵长类动物视网膜老化的定量分析

• 批准号: 3262110
• 负责人: Christine A Curcio
• 金额: $ 12.75万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1990
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1990-07-15 至 1993-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/3262110
• 关键词: Macaca; aging; cone cell; eye disorder diagnosis; fovea centralis retinae; human tissue; immunocytochemistry; microscopy; monoclonal antibody; neuroanatomy; retina; retinal ganglion; rod cell; statistics /biometry; tissue mosaicism; visual fixation; visual pathways; visual photoreceptor; visual photosensitivity

A major question is vision research is how human visual performance is limited by the architecture of the neural tissue which subserves it. Our goal is to establish a reliable and internally consistent anatomical database for comparing the anatomy of the human photoreceptor (PR) mosaic to visual function. In this proposal we continue to determine the extent to which age- related declines in visual function can be explained by loss of PR and ganglion cells (GC) in the retina. We use an unstained retinal whole mount and computer-assisted morphometry to characterize the spatial density of cones, rods, GC, and the size spectrum of GC somata in donor eyes over 70 years of age. We will also use these techniques to study a small number of eyes from elderly person with well documented visual function. Data on these cell types can serve as a base line for other studies of age-related maculopathy and glaucoma, major blinding disease of the elderly. We also propose to extend our work on the spatial distribution of cones in young retina to more detailed characterization of morphological substrates underlying sampling, sensitivity, and connectivity properties of the human cone mosaic. We will use Voronoi-based spatial statistics and Fast Fourier methods to analyze cone packing geometry as a function of eccentricity. We will investigate the spatial distribution of blue cones in the human retina using a recently developed antibody specific to the blue cone opsin. The ability of cones to gather light efficiently, is determined partly by inner and outer segment morphology. We plan to quantify this morphology using computer reconstruction and graphic display of optical sections through the long axis of clones. Finally, we will investigate the pattern of cone-cone connectivity in the peripheral retina by injecting a patch of adjacent cones in an in vitro preparation and examining the patterns of connections made by cone telodendria. We will also determine the projection of visual field onto the human GC layer by accounting for the lateral offset of foveal GC. Our previously collected data on the spatial density of GC can then be expressed in terms of cells/deg2 as a function of eccentricity in visual degrees. These data can be compared with the distribution of cones in the same eyes and with published estimates of the human cortical magnification factor.

视觉研究的一个主要问题是人类的视觉表现如何