21 February 2014
Seeing the Light
In India, many thousands of children are born blind every year. Some of them can now be given the gift of sight through surgery or other treatments – such as the child in these 'before' and 'after' pictures – thanks to the efforts of doctors like those from Project Prakash. Prakash means light in the Indian Sanskrit language, and so far they've helped bring sight to nearly 2,000 children. This has created a unique population of children of differing ages who are all seeing the world for the first time. So as well as providing life-changing treatment, the Project Prakash team are carrying out research aimed at understanding the changes that happen in the brain as children start to see and learn to recognise things. The team hopes to literally shed light on some of the complex processes that underpin vision, and bring a brighter future for India's blind children.
Written by
- Image courtesy of Project Prakash
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
- Copyright held by original authors
- Research Published in PLOS Biology, December 2013
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