UCI, UCLA study reveals new approach to remedying childhood visual disorders

Researchers identify key inhibitory neurons critical for vision development

2013-08-26

(Press-News.org) Irvine, Calif., Aug. 26, 2013 — By discovering the role of key neurons that mediate an important part of vision development, UC Irvine and UCLA neurobiologists have revealed a new approach to correcting visual disorders in children who suffer from early cataracts or amblyopia, also known as lazy eye.

Such youngsters can have permanent defects in vision, even after surgery to remove cataracts or correct lazy eye. These flaws are often a result of improper brain development due to visual deprivation during childhood. In contrast, when cataracts in adults are surgically corrected, normal vision is usually restored.

Xiangmin Xu, assistant professor of anatomy & neurobiology at UC Irvine, and Josh Trachtenberg, associate professor of neurobiology at UCLA, found that this phenomenon is caused by a specific class of inhibitory neurons that control the time window, or "critical period," in early vision development, generally before age 7. The results of their study appeared online Aug. 25 in Nature.

The researchers discovered that improper functioning of these key neurons during the critical period of development is responsible for these vision defects. Additionally, in tests on mice, they used an experimental drug compound to reopen this critical-period window and treat the neuronal defects associated with temporary loss of vision in one eye during early development.

Their work suggests that drugs targeted to the critical period-regulating neurons can correct central vision disorders in children who've suffered from amblyopia or early cataracts.

"The specific type of neurons that mediate the critical-period window during childhood development have not been well understood until now," Xu said. "Our breakthrough outlines a new path for treatments that can restore normal vision in children who have had early vision disorders."

### http://news.uci.edu/press-releases/uci-ucla-study-reveals-new-approach-to-remedying-childhood-visual-disorders/

Nicholas Olivas and Taruna Ikrar of UC Irvine and Sandra Kuhlman and Elaine Tring of UCLA contributed to the study, which received support from the National Eye Institute (grant EY016052) and the National Institute for Neurological Disorders & Stroke (grant NS078434).

About the University of California, Irvine: Located in coastal Orange County, near a thriving employment hub in one of the nation's safest cities, UC Irvine was founded in 1965. One of only 62 members of the Association of American Universities, it's ranked first among U.S. universities under 50 years old by the London-based Times Higher Education. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UC Irvine has more than 28,000 students and offers 192 degree programs. It's Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $4.3 billion annually to the local economy.

Media access: UC Irvine maintains an online directory of faculty available as experts to the media at today.uci.edu/experts. Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UC Irvine faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UC Irvine news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.

Contact: Cathy Lawhon
949-824-1511
clawhon@uci.edu

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Why do haters have to hate?

2013-08-26

PHILADELPHIA (August 26, 2013) – New research has uncovered the reason why some people seem to dislike everything while others seem to like everything. Apparently, it's all part of our individual personality – a dimension that researchers have coined "dispositional attitude." People with a positive dispositional attitude have a strong tendency to like things, whereas people with a negative dispositional attitude have a strong tendency to dislike things, according to research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The journal article, "Attitudes ...

Penn study finds earlier peak for Spain's glaciers

2013-08-26

The last glacial maximum was a time when Earth's far northern and far southern latitudes were largely covered in ice sheets and sea levels were low. Over much of the planet, glaciers were at their greatest extent roughly 20,000 years ago. But according to a study headed by University of Pennsylvania geologist Jane Willenbring, that wasn't true in at least one part of southern Europe. Due to local effects of temperature and precipitation, the local glacial maximum occurred considerably earlier, around 26,000 years ago. The finding sheds new light on how regional climate ...

Northwestern Medicine uses new minimally invasive technique for melanoma

2013-08-26

CHICAGO – At first, Krista Easom figured the little red bump on her foot was nothing more than a blister. It didn't hurt, but after a couple months, it didn't go away either. She booked an appointment with a dermatologist to have it removed. She wasn't worried. Easom, a 24-year-old law school student from New Jersey, was healthy, had no family history of cancer and was getting ready to enjoy some time in her newly adopted city of Chicago. That's when she received the results from her dermatologist, who removed a part of the blister and had it tested. It turns out ...

Researchers develop software tool for cancer genomics

2013-08-26

Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) have developed a new bioinformatics software tool designed to more easily identify genetic mutations responsible for cancers. The tool, called DrGaP, is the subject of a new paper published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. Xing Hua, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow in biostatistics at the National Cancer Institute, and a former visiting scholar at MCW, is the first author of the paper. Yan Lu, Ph.D., assistant professor of physiology, is corresponding author; and Pengyuan Liu, Ph.D., associate professor of ...

Size matters as nanocrystals go through phases

2013-08-26

Understanding what happens to a material as it undergoes phase transformations – changes from a solid to a liquid to a gas or a plasma – is of fundamental scientific interest and critical for optimizing commercial applications. For metal nanocrystals, assumptions about the size-dependence of phase transformations were made that now need to be re-evaluated. A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has demonstrated that as metal nanocrystals go through phase transformations, size can make a much bigger ...

Carbon-sequestering ocean plants may cope with climate changes over the long run

2013-08-26

SAN FRANCISCO -- A year-long experiment on tiny ocean organisms called coccolithophores suggests that the single-celled algae may still be able to grow their calcified shells even as oceans grow warmer and more acidic in Earth's near future. The study stands in contrast to earlier studies suggesting that coccolithophores would fail to build strong shells in acidic waters. The world's oceans are expected to become more acidic as human activities pump increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere. But after the researchers raised one strain of the ...

Insight into marine life's ability to adapt to climate change

2013-08-26

A study into marine life around an underwater volcanic vent in the Mediterranean, might hold the key to understanding how some species will be able to survive in increasingly acidic sea water should anthropogenic climate change continue. Researchers have discovered that some species of polychaete worms are able to modify their metabolic rates to better cope with and thrive in waters high in carbon dioxide (CO2), which is otherwise poisonous to other, often closely-related species. The study sheds new light on the robustness of some marine species and the relative resilience ...

Researchers uncover new biological target for combating Parkinson's disease

2013-08-26

Researchers at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere have brought new clarity to the picture of what goes awry in the brain during Parkinson's disease and identified a compound that eases the disease's symptoms in mice. Their discoveries, described in a paper published online in Nature Neuroscience on August 25, also overturn established ideas about the role of a protein considered key to the disease's progress. "Not only were we able to identify the mechanism that could cause progressive cell death in both inherited and non-inherited forms of Parkinson's, we found there were already ...

Scientists pinpoint 105 additional genetic errors that cause cystic fibrosis

2013-08-26

Of the over 1,900 errors already reported in the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis (CF), it is unclear how many of them actually contribute to the inherited disease. Now a team of researchers reports significant headway in figuring out which mutations are benign and which are deleterious. In so doing, they have increased the number of known CF-causing mutations from 22 to 127, accounting for 95 percent of the variations found in patients with CF. In a summary of their research to be published online in Nature Genetics Aug. 25, the scientists say that characterizing ...

Cocaine's effect on mice may explain drug-seeking behavior

2013-08-26

Cocaine can speedily rewire high-level brain circuits that support learning, memory and decision-making, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley, and UCSF. The findings shed new light on the frontal brain's role in drug-seeking behavior and may be key to tackling addiction. Looking into the frontal lobes of live mice at a cellular level, researchers found that, after just one dose of cocaine, the rodents showed fast and robust growth of dendritic spines, which are tiny, twig-like structures that connect neurons and form the nodes of the brain's ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Printed skin to replace animal testing

Precision medicine could be possible in the fight against antibiotic resistance

Researchers at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University identify new targeted approach to protect neurons against degeneration

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

[Press-News.org] UCI, UCLA study reveals new approach to remedying childhood visual disorders
Researchers identify key inhibitory neurons critical for vision development