5 December 2018, 4 pm
SISSA, "P. Budinich" Main Lecture Hall
Vision is flexible, and continuously adapts with experience, molding cortical circuitry to analyze optimally incoming information. In this Colloquium, Maria Concetta Morrone of University of Pisa and Fondazione Stella Maris IRCCS will present evidence that plastic changes in visual cortex in the newborn can dramatically mold the visual brain to allow nearly normal vision in the absence of primary cortex, and that visual plasticity extends throughout adult life, contrary common belief. 7T spectroscopy and BOLD evidence helped us to unravel some of the neuronal mechanisms of this plasticity, opening the possibility to develop a new therapeutic approach in many adult neurological diseases. Understanding the residual plastic potential of the adult visual cortex, and how to enhance it, is potentially important as the progress in retinal prosthesis technology opens new possibilities for vision restoration in blind people with retinal pathologies.