The Pulvinar Is Instrumental In The Development Of Visual Cortical Networks
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$1,192,911.00
Summary
This Project will elucidate the mechanisms and brain structures involved in visual system development and how their perturbation in early life can lead to neurodevelopmental and cognitive brain disorders, such as Williams and fragile-X syndromes as well as dyslexia. Furthermore, it will demonstrate how the visual brain has a greater capacity to compensate and achieve preservation of vision following an injury in early life.
Lesions of the primary visual area (V1) are sufficient to cause blindness, even though there are many other brain areas normally involved in vision. However, when V1 is lesioned very early in life people show some recovery, and may be able to see well enough to perform everyday activities. In order to understand what happens in the brain that allows this preservation of vision, we will study changes in the pathways linking the eyes to the brain, following lesions at different ages.
Neural Circuits For Active Vision In The Primate Cerebral Cortex
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$632,938.00
Summary
This project will try to understand how we use visual information to identify objects by their shape and motion, in natural situations in which the eyes are moving all the time. This will be accomplished by recording the electrical activity of brain cells while a trained animal is performing different types of tasks, such as tracking a moving object or exploring a scene with its eyes.