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NEI Research News

Thanks to the work of NEI scientists and grantees, we’re constantly learning new information about the causes and treatment of vision disorders. Get the latest updates about their work — along with other news about NEI.

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206 items
Three soccer players on a field. Center player looks down at the ball by her feet.

Attention to objects in peripheral vision is not driven by tiny eye movements

New research by National Eye Institute (NEI) investigators shows that while microsaccades seem to boost or diminish the strength of the brain signals underlying attention, eye movements are not drivers of those brain signals.
Green retinal ganglion cell spreads dendrites in all directions.

Antabuse may help revive vision in people with progressive blinding disorders

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that a drug once widely used to wean alcoholics off of drinking helps to improve sight in mice with retinal degeneration.
Jackie Norrie and Victoria Honnell

Modular super-enhancer controls retinal development

Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital identified distinct functions for regions of a super-enhancer that controls gene expression during retina formation, calling it a ‘modular’ super-enhancer.
Spencer Smith with microscope in laboratory

A New Microscope for Imaging Neural Circuitry

Researchers from UCSB report the development of a new microscope they describe as “Dual Independent Enhanced Scan Engines for Large field-of-view Two-Photon imaging (Diesel2p),” which provides unprecedented brain-imaging ability.
Optical illusion showing a vase or two faces

Which side is which?: How the brain perceives borders

Salk scientists have discovered that neurons deep in the brain’s cortex are the first to compute which side of a visual border is an object and which side is background.
Komiyama and Hattori in computer lab

Neurobiologists Reveal How Value Decisions are Coded into Our Brains

Researchers UC San Diego discover that persistency allows value signals to be most effectively represented, or “coded,” across different areas of the brain.
Close up of eye

Cartography of the visual cortex

Researchers at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI) have uncovered a surprisingly complex yet precisely ordered map of visual space in area V2 of the cortex.
Green fluorescent neuronal cell passing through several layers of retina.

Researchers Discover New Type of Nerve Cell in the Retina

Scientists at the John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah have discovered a new type of nerve cell, or neuron, in the retina. The newly identified Campana cell could play a role in visual signal processing.

Living Retina Achieves Sensitivity and Efficiency Engineers Can Only Dream About

In a pair of papers on retinal structure, Duke University neurobiologists have shown that the rigors of natural selection and evolution have shaped the retinas in our eyes just as this theory of optimization would predict.
man looking at phone and sitting on sofa

Scientists Pinpoint the Uncertainty of Our Working Memory

A new NEI-funded study shows the extent we trust our memory in decision-making