Blueprint for adult visual system is present at birth
A study published July 3 in eLife by Harvard Medical School researchers Michael Arcaro and Margaret Livingstone suggests that the answer could be both. The team's findings reveal that a primitive blueprint of organization is already present in the brains of primates just a few days after birth and appears to get gradually filled in with age and experience. The findings, the scientists say, not only shed light on a long-standing conundrum in neurobiology, but could also explain some features of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, which often involve avoidance of certain visual stimuli, and highlight the importance of correcting visual deficits in infants as early as possible to ensure normal brain development. Livingstone, the HMS Takeda Professor of Neurobiology, has worked for decades to decipher organization in the brain's visual system. In their newly published experiments, she and Arcaro attempted to gain a better understanding of this system in four m...