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REVIEW article

Front. Cell. Neurosci.
Sec. Cellular Neuropathology
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fncel.2024.1502473

Bridging the Gap of Vision Restoration

Provisionally accepted
Maya Carleton Maya Carleton 1Nicholas Oesch Nicholas Oesch 1,2,3*
  • 1 Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States
  • 2 Department of Ophthalmology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States
  • 3 Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) are similar in that both result in photoreceptor degeneration leading to permanent progressive vision loss. This affords the possibility of implementing vision restoration techniques, where light signaling is restored to spared retinal circuitry to recreate vision. There are far more AMD patients1, yet more resources have been put towards researching and developing vision restoration strategies for RP despite it rarity, because of the tractability of RP disease models. The hope is that these therapies will extend to the AMD population, however, many questions remain about how the implementation of prosthetic or optogenetic vision restoration technologies will translate between RP and AMD patients. In this review, we discuss the difference and similarities of RP and AMD with a focus on aspects expected to impact vision restoration strategies, and we identify key gaps in knowledge needed to further improve vision restoration technologies for a broad patient population.

    Keywords: Vision restoration, Retinal Degeneration, age related macular degeneration, Retinitis Pigmentosa, Retinal prosthesis, Retina, optogenetics

    Received: 26 Sep 2024; Accepted: 06 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Carleton and Oesch. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Nicholas Oesch, Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, 92093, California, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.