Functional recovery and morphological changes after injury to the optic nerve.

Physiological and morphological parameters of optic nerve lesions followed by functional recovery are discussed in detail. To study functional and/or morphological recovery processes, a recently developed model of the 'graded optic nerve crush' is compared with other models of lesioning. It is concluded that the optic nerve crush model is a valuable tool when studying brain repair mechanisms. First results show that functional recovery depends on the initial preservation of a sufficiently large population of ganglion cells in the retina. It takes place despite the progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells during the recovery period.