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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Cell. Neurosci.
Sec. Cellular Neuropathology
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fncel.2024.1519197
This article is part of the Research Topic Novel Approaches to Foster Brain Plasticity in Neurodevelopmental and Neurodegenerative Disorders View all articles

Acceleration of spontaneous visual recovery by voluntary physical exercise in adolescent amblyopic rats

Provisionally accepted
Irene Di Marco Irene Di Marco Gabriele Sansevero Gabriele Sansevero Nicoletta Berardi Nicoletta Berardi Alessandro Sale Alessandro Sale *
  • Department of Medicine, National Research Council (CNR), Roma, Italy

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

    Abnormal visual experience during development resulting from an imbalance in the activity of the two eyes can lead to permanent severe visual deficits, a pathology called amblyopia (lazy eye). While this condition is extremely difficult to treat in adults, current interventions can elicit significant amounts of visual recovery when performed in juveniles before the end of the critical period, even if the achievable results can be unsatisfactory due to the progressive decline in visual cortical plasticity.Similarly to human subjects, rodents becoming amblyopic due to early visual deprivation can display spontaneous functional recovery if the deprivation ends within the critical period time window. With the aim to investigate the impact of non-invasive strategies able to increase this spontaneous potential for plasticity, we wondered whether physical exercise could speed up spontaneous recovery of visual

    Keywords: Amblyopia, physical activity, visual cortex plasticity, Adolescent rats, monocular deprivation

    Received: 29 Oct 2024; Accepted: 09 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Di Marco, Sansevero, Berardi and Sale. 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: Alessandro Sale, Department of Medicine, National Research Council (CNR), Roma, Italy

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