Photo: Mark Hanson at Mark Joseph Studios
New research from the lab of MCB Professor Marla Feller shows visual stimuli can shape the visual system before eye opening.
These results open up a whole new area of research. “No one has essentially put a mouse in the dark before the eyes open, because they thought it would have no effect,” Feller says. Her next step is to investigate how light exposure before eye opening — which happens in nature for many species of mice — might influence the development of the circuitry within the retina itself.