Influence of removal of retinal inputs on the development of connectivity in the primate visual system

During development the input to the brain from sensory organs is known to regulate diverse aspects of central development. Removal of retinal input to the brain has been intensively studied in rodents as a model of human blindness. In my internship I am analyzing the results of retrograde tracing experiments which allow us to accurately map the changes in inter-areal connectivity as well as the cortical projections of subcortical structures. Our findings suggest that removal of the retina at early stages of prenatal development in macaque leads to primate-specific changes in the development of the visual system which differ from results in non-primates and are relevant for understanding human development.