In a Scientific First, Blind Mice Regain Eyesight

Once the optic nerve that’s responsible for sight is damaged, it’s impossible to see again. At least that’s been the dogma. But a group of U.S. scientists has upended that thinking and helped mice with destroyed optic nerves to see again. It does not have immediate implications for humans yet, but it points researchers in promising new directions. Andrew Huberman, an associate professor of neurobiology at Stanford University, and his team describe their advance in a study published in Nature Neuroscience. To learn about the way vision nerves grow, they crushed the optic nerve in one eye of mice. Once destroyed, the long finger-like extensions sent out by nerve cells from the eye to the brain start to shrivel, eventually severing any connection to the brain and resulting in blindness. Huberman and his colleagues, however, found that a combination of visual stimulation of the nerve, along with nerve-growing chemicals, can rescue these extensions, called axons, and coax them to stretch out again. Not only that, but the axons are able to find their appropriate connections to the correct sight-dedicated parts of the brain to restore vision. Mice with similar damage to the nerve that didn’t receive the treatment did not show much regrowth of the axons. About three weeks after the optic nerves in the mice were damaged, the researchers saw evidence of axons extending back into the brain from the eye, something that previous efforts to regenerate eye nerves ha...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized blindness eye sight eyes medicine Vision vision loss Source Type: news