Word: retinas
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...laboratory specifically studies how the vertebrate retina takes in visual information, processes and transforms this information and then processes electrical signals which serve as input to the brain...
...Pearl Van Vliet, a retired medical-center receptionist who was suffering from the same condition that had deprived Ernest's father of his sight. That disease is known as age-related macular degeneration, in which the eye's macula, a remarkably sensitive structure in the middle of the retina, gradually loses its ability to distinguish shapes and colors...
...delicate procedure that lasted more than two hours, Ernest and his team tried a new and hopeful approach to macular degeneration. They first took cells from the retina of an aborted fetus, then surgically transplanted them into Van Vliet's severely impaired left eye. Since the operation, the transplanted cells have begun to proliferate, forming minute projections that stretch toward Van Vliet's macula. For Ernest, a large, affable man of 62, the weekly ritual of scrutinizing the eye scans that chronicle Van Vliet's recovery from surgery proved intensely satisfying, not only professionally but also because of his frustrating...
...estimated 10 million Americans, is not a fatal disorder. But it can be cruelly debilitating. For while the macula (named after the Latin word for spot) is no wider than a pencil, it is a hundred times more sensitive to small-scale features than the rest of the retina. Without a healthy macula, people cannot read a newspaper, recognize a friend, thread a needle, watch TV, safely negotiate stairs or see much of anything...
...added several of these odd-looking constructs to a culture dish that also contained fetal RPE cells. Within 24 hours, the cells attached themselves to these motes of material and started to grow. Then the researchers transplanted the spheres into the eyes of rabbits, positioning them just beneath the retina. The RPE cells did not stay put; instead they migrated throughout the eye. This suggested that it should be possible to position a transplant at a safe distance from the macula and still get therapeutic results...