Unilateral photoreceptor rescue can improve the ability of the opposite, untreated, eye to drive cortical cells in a retinal degeneration model.

In the Royal College of Surgeons, rat photoreceptor degeneration occurs over the first several months of life, causing deterioration of visual cortical responsiveness seen as greater numbers of cells being nonresponsive to visual stimulation, poor tuning of those cells that do respond, and an overall tendency for domination by the contralateral visual input. If the progress of degeneration in one eye is slowed by intraretinal cell transplantation, cortical responses to stimulation of the remaining, untreated, eye are much stronger, better tuned and histograms of ocular dominance resemble more those in normal rats. This suggests that the rescued eye is able to enhance performance in the untreated eye by some form of postsynaptic mechanism.