Intraretinal grafting restores visual function in light-blinded rats

Abstract

In seeing rats light flashes inhibit acoustic startle reflexes at short lead times. In contrast, visually impaired (light-blinded) rats show an early phase of exaggerated reflex expression, revealing the presence of pathological visual processing, and then an aberrant late phase of delayed inhibition. Grafting fetal retinal cells into the damaged retina entirely removed reflex facilitation and restored a modest degree of properly timed and statistically significant reflex inhibition. This restoration of visually-mediated behaviour, observed in two independent groups, reveals that intraretinal grafts provide useful information to blinded hosts.