On 3 December 2024, Professor Ming-Fai FONG from the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Tech and Emory University delivered a lecture about her discoveries of new treatments for amblyopia (“lazy eye”) through modulating homeostatic plasticity in the mature, mammalian nervous system.
Amblyopia is a neurodevelopmental visual impairment that is characterized by poor vision in one eye. Current treatment is hindered by poor compliance and recurrence among children. Using a single-dose, intravitreal pharmacological inhibition to temporarily inactivate the retinal cells, Professor Fong and her team found that the subsequent visual function in the deprived eye was successfully restored in two evolutionarily diverse species (i.e., cats and mice). The exposure to darkness by pharmacological approach increases the responsiveness of the thalamocortical neurons and visual cortical neurons, as well as decreases the threshold of synaptic potentiation. Overall, visual deprivation holds exciting translational potential to the clinical treatment of amblyopia.