Consider the cornea if you will – and most people won’t unless they’re having a problem. It is the transparent front surface of the eye which allows vision by focusing light as it enters. The cornea is densely packed with multi-tasking nerves that mediate pain, blink reflexes and tear production, all indispensable tasks in the proper maintenance of ocular surface health. Because it is highly innervated, meaning it has a lot of nerve connections, the cornea is a key area for understanding sensory functions.
But it is that same complexity which has made it increasingly difficult to grasp the full nature of how those corneal nerves work, resulting in key knowledge gaps in the field. Along with a team at Duke University, a University of Houston optometry researcher is set to fill in the gaps by mapping the cornea and providing a comprehensive analysis of corneal nerves at the morphologic, molecular and functional level.
“We are developing methods to selectively label the neurons that innervate the cornea. These neurons make up about 1% of the population of neurons located in the trigeminal ganglia, the peripheral nervous system that mediates pain and other sensory functions,” said Anna Matynia, associate professor at the University of Houston College of Optometry.