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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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Brain pathways for visual processing

Scientists discover anatomical changes in the brains of the newly sighted

May 2, 2023

Following cataract removal, some of the brain’s visual pathways seem to be more malleable than previously thought.
Views of a patio from a walking, crawling, or flying perspective, and a collection of scrambled views.

Visually navigating on foot uses unique brain region

March 15, 2023

Using vision to efficiently move through an area by foot uses a unique region of the brain’s cortex, according to a small study funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI).
Synapses between neurons in thalamus and cortex.

Sparse, small, but diverse neural connections help make perception reliable, efficient

February 2, 2023

In a study from the Picower Institute at MIT, the first detailed mapping and modeling of thalamus inputs onto visual cortex neurons show brain leverages “wisdom of the crowd” to process sensory information.
Researchers examining brain

Brain cells use a telephone trick to report what they see

November 29, 2022

A new study from Duke University finds that single neurons conveying visual information about two separate objects in sight do so by alternating signals about one or the other.
Illuminated neuron projection from visual cortext

Neuroscience researchers awarded nearly $2 million by National Institutes of Health to study visual processing

November 28, 2022

Jordan Hamm, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Georgia State University, has received a five-year, $1.93 million award from the National Eye Institute.
Red, green and blue dots on screen representing RPE protein

NIH scientists discover essential step in recharging the eye’s light-sensing retina

October 26, 2022

Scientists have discovered a mechanism by which an area of a protein shape-shifts to convert vitamin A into a usable form for the eye’s light-sensing photoreceptor cells.
Top-down sectional views of 4 brain scans, showing missing hemispheres.

Word and face recognition can be adequately supported with half a brain, study finds

October 26, 2022

An unprecedented study of brain plasticity and visual perception found that people who, as children, had undergone surgery removing half of their brain correctly recognized differences between pairs of words or faces more than 80% of the time.
Long distance connections in the brain.

Haven’t I seen this before? Study offers new insights into how the brain separates perception from memory

October 18, 2022

The brain works in fundamentally different ways when remembering what we have seen compared to seeing something for the first time, a team of scientists has found.
Florescent photo of mouse rod photoreceptor, next to photoreceptor schematic showing cell body, inner and outer segments.

Scientists shine light on how eyes adapt to the dark

October 14, 2022

A basic research study from the National Eye Institute (NEI) explains how the molecule transducin moves within light-sensing rod photoreceptors in mouse retina to help the eye quickly adapt from bright to low light and back.
LCA is an inherited disorder that causes vision loss in childhood. It primarily affects the functioning of the retina, the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye, as shown here. Photo credit: National Eye Institute

Eye-opening discovery about adult brain’s ability to recover vision

October 5, 2022

University of California, Irvine team demonstrates the adult brain has the potential to partially recover from inherited blindness.

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