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EW NEWS & OPINION October 2017 21 Reference 1. Siu CR, et al. Development of glutamatergic proteins in human visual cortex across the lifespan. J Neurosci. 2017;37:6031–6042. are there and getting parameters set. Dr. Murphy said this second stage is an interesting one as there is a lot of inter-individual variability. The third stage is 5–10 years old. Dr. Murphy described it as the op- timizing stage, picking out the pro- grams that are needed and making them function optimally. The fourth stage, teens and young adults, is making sure that all the connections are working well and the computer is functioning perfectly. Finally, the fifth stage is aging. In this stage, Dr. Murphy said they see the system starting to degrade, which they think is the result of "compensatory changes." Prior to this research, Dr. Mur- phy said there has been progress in studying the visual cortex in animal models and in studying human visual perception, but "there was not a whole lot to knit the two of them together." Even with these recent findings, there's still much to learn about the neurobiology of the human visual cortex, she said. With the findings that the primary visual cortex continues developing until the mid-30s, Dr. Murphy said this could mean treat- ments for visual disorders, such as amblyopia, could take place at older ages, if needed. It also provides a way to better translate treatments being developed in animal models to humans. "The way that we typically align ages is with reproductive state, and that's not a very good way to line up things like synaptic development be- cause they don't necessarily follow the same metronome in the animal model and in the human. As a first step, these studies that we've been doing are aimed at helping make that alignment better so that when a potential treatment is developed in an animal model, one can translate it to the right age in the human," Dr. Murphy said. Moving the research forward, Dr. Murphy said they focused on one of the cortical areas that pro- cesses visual information, so there's more work to be done in studying other areas that do this as well as ar- eas of the human cortex specialized for other functions. "There is not very much infor- mation known of [human cortex] neurobiology, and certainly not of the kind of information that we published," she said. EW Avoid eroding outcomes Over 3 million grafts implanted without any implant associated infections Processed patch allografts for glaucoma drainage device surgery New study compares erosion rates by tissue type 1 • Study compares scleral allografts to corneal tissue • Scleral tissue outperforms corneal tissue by nearly 35% The Tutoplast ® process advantage • Up to 10% Less costly than fresh corneal grafts 2 • Easy to handle and apply • Five year shelf life at room temperature • consistency in tissue quality Avoid scleral perforation risks ® www.katena.com • 800.225.1195 1 Erosion Rates with Corneal and Scleral Patch Grafts After Glaucoma Drainage Device Implantation Azra Idrizovic, Arindel Maharaj, Julien Thomas, William Feuer, Amitabha Bhakta, David Greenfield Bascom Palmer Eye Institute 2 Tube shunt coverage with gamma-irradiated cornea allograft (VisionGraft) Feyzahan Ekici, Marlene R Moster, Victor Cvintal, Wanda D Hu, and Michael Waisbourd. Clinical Ophthalmology, 2015; 9: 751–755. Published online 2015 May 4 Tutoplast ® is a registered trademark of Tutogen Medical – and is used with permission. KB-Adv-053117-Rev0 Editors' note: Dr. Murphy has no finan- cial interests related to her comments. Contact information Murphy: kmurphy@vision.mcmaster.ca

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