Lessons About Visual Plasticity from Adults Treated for Congenital Cataracts

This work takes advantage of a natural experiment: children born with cataracts in both eyes that blocked all patterned visual input until they were removed surgically and replaced by compensatory contact lenses.  Our longitudinal studies show that such deprivation causes seemingly permanent deficits in many visual abilities. including acuity, motion processing, and face perception.  Yet, playing an action video game for 40 hours in adulthood is sufficient to ameliorate many of these deficits.