Neural development of foveal vision

项目总结 了解大脑如何处理我们从视觉凝视中心(中心凹视觉)看到的东西 对保持健康的视力至关重要，包括高空间敏锐度视力、色觉和视觉注意力。 中心视力缺陷会导致失明，例如黄斑变性或深度知觉丧失。 就像懒眼(弱视)一样。猕猴的视觉系统与人类非常相似 因此是研究中心凹视力的理想动物模型。在出生后的头几个月里 猕猴的发育和人类生命的最初几年，视网膜光感受器经历 一次重要的迁徙建立了成体中心凹视锥和视杆的分布。尽管这很重要 作为视觉的一部分，人们对发育过程中中央凹的皮质表现知之甚少。 在这里，我们研究了出生后视网膜光感受器迁移和中心凹变化的关系。 幼猴大脑皮质的表现。使用体内视网膜光感受器成像和 皮质光学成像和电生理方法，我们的目标是回答关于 视网膜视锥感光细胞迁移与黄斑中心凹皮质表现变化的关系 出生后最初几个月的发育。多个发育时间点将在前3个阶段进行研究 出生后几个月，黄斑中心凹视锥密度可以用自适应光学测绘。配对的视网膜和 将进行皮质调查，并对数据进行关联。关于大脑皮层损伤机制的启示 发育过程中的可塑性将对理解中央视觉的发展产生重大影响。 皮质发育的计算模型，以及对视觉的视网膜和皮质基础的理解 发育障碍，可能导致治疗弱视和其他神经系统疾病的新方法 提高脑机接口治疗失明的能力。

PROJECT SUMMARY Understanding how the brain processes what we see from the very center of our visual gaze (foveal vision) is essential for maintaining healthy vision, including high spatial acuity vision, color vision, and visual attention. Deficits of central vision lead to blindness as in the case of macular degeneration, or loss of depth perception as in the case of lazy eye (amblyopia). Macaque monkeys have visual systems very similar to humans and thus are an ideal animal model for studies of foveal vision. During the first few months of postnatal development in the macaque monkey and first few years of life in the human, retinal photoreceptors undergo an important migration to establish the adult foveal cone and rod distribution. Despite the importance of this part of vision, there is very little known regarding cortical representation of the fovea during development. Here, we investigate the relationship between postnatal retinal photoreceptor migration and changes in foveal cortical representation in infant monkeys. Using a combination of in vivo retinal photoreceptor imaging and cortical optical imaging and electrophysiological approaches, we aim to answer questions regarding the relationship between retinal cone photoreceptor migration and changes in foveal cortical representation in the first few months of postnatal development. Multiple developmental timepoints will be studied over the first 3 postnatal months, a period when foveal cone density can be mapped with adaptive optics. Paired retinal and cortical investigation will be conducted and data correlated. Revelations regarding the mechanisms of cortical plasticity during development will have great impact on understanding the development of central vision, computational models of cortical development, and on understanding retinal and cortical bases of visual developmental disorders which may lead to new approaches to treat neurological diseases like amblyopia and improve capabilities of brain-machine interfaces for the treatment of blindness.