Amblyopia resulting from early deprivation of vision or defocus in one eye reflects an imbalance of input from the eyes to the visual cortex.We tested the hypothesis that asynchronous stimulation of the two eyes might induce synaptic plasticity and rebalance input.Experiments on normal adults showed that repetitive brief exposure of grating stimuli,with the onset of each stimulus delayed by 8.3 ms in one eye,results in a shift in perceptual eye dominance.Clinical studies(Clinical trial registration number:Chi CTR2100049130),using popular 3D movies with similar asynchrony between the two eyes(amblyopic eye stimulated first)to treat anisometropic amblyopia,established that just 10.5 h of conditioning over<3 weeks produced improvement that met criteria for successful treatment.The benefits of asynchronous conditioning accumulate over 20–3045 min sessions,and are maintained for at least 2 years.Finally,we demonstrate that asynchronous binocular treatment alone is more effective than patching only.This novel treatment is popular with children and is some 50 times more efficient than patching alone.
Xin HuangHuika XiaQi ZhangColin BlakemoreYan NanWenyao WangJie GaoSpencer S NgJing WenTiejun HuangXiaoqing LiMingliang Pu
A recent survey shows that diabetes affect 92.4 million people in China's Mainland [1], among which 16.9 million have diabetic retinopathy （DR） [2]. DR is one of the major causes of blindness in the working age population in both developing and developed countries. Although the exact mechanism by which diabetes causes retinopathy remains elusive, several hypotheses have been postulated to explain pathogenies of the disease. Here we invited five groups of scientists and clinicians to share their recent discoveries and expert opinions in molecular biology, pathophysiology, genetics, and epigenetics of DR.
