39
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Glaucoma: the retina and beyond

      review-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Over 60 million people worldwide are diagnosed with glaucomatous optic neuropathy, which is estimated to be responsible for 8.4 million cases of irreversible blindness globally. Glaucoma is associated with characteristic damage to the optic nerve and patterns of visual field loss which principally involves the loss of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). At present, intraocular pressure (IOP) presents the only modifiable risk factor for glaucoma, although RGC and vision loss can continue in patients despite well-controlled IOP. This, coupled with the present inability to diagnose glaucoma until relatively late in the disease process, has led to intense investigations towards the development of novel techniques for the early diagnosis of disease. This review outlines our current understanding of the potential mechanisms underlying RGC and axonal loss in glaucoma. Similarities between glaucoma and other neurodegenerative diseases of the central nervous system are drawn before an overview of recent developments in techniques for monitoring RGC health is provided, including recent progress towards the development of RGC specific contrast agents. The review concludes by discussing techniques to assess glaucomatous changes in the brain using MRI and the clinical relevance of glaucomatous-associated changes in the visual centres of the brain.

          Related collections

          Most cited references158

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Cluster failure: Why fMRI inferences for spatial extent have inflated false-positive rates

          The most widely used task functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analyses use parametric statistical methods that depend on a variety of assumptions. In this work, we use real resting-state data and a total of 3 million random task group analyses to compute empirical familywise error rates for the fMRI software packages SPM, FSL, and AFNI, as well as a nonparametric permutation method. For a nominal familywise error rate of 5%, the parametric statistical methods are shown to be conservative for voxelwise inference and invalid for clusterwise inference. Our results suggest that the principal cause of the invalid cluster inferences is spatial autocorrelation functions that do not follow the assumed Gaussian shape. By comparison, the nonparametric permutation test is found to produce nominal results for voxelwise as well as clusterwise inference. These findings speak to the need of validating the statistical methods being used in the field of neuroimaging.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            The role of mitochondria in aging.

            Over the last decade, accumulating evidence has suggested a causative link between mitochondrial dysfunction and major phenotypes associated with aging. Somatic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations and respiratory chain dysfunction accompany normal aging, but the first direct experimental evidence that increased mtDNA mutation levels contribute to progeroid phenotypes came from the mtDNA mutator mouse. Recent evidence suggests that increases in aging-associated mtDNA mutations are not caused by damage accumulation, but rather are due to clonal expansion of mtDNA replication errors that occur during development. Here we discuss the caveats of the traditional mitochondrial free radical theory of aging and highlight other possible mechanisms, including insulin/IGF-1 signaling (IIS) and the target of rapamycin pathways, that underlie the central role of mitochondria in the aging process.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Top-down influences on visual processing.

              Re-entrant or feedback pathways between cortical areas carry rich and varied information about behavioural context, including attention, expectation, perceptual tasks, working memory and motor commands. Neurons receiving such inputs effectively function as adaptive processors that are able to assume different functional states according to the task being executed. Recent data suggest that the selection of particular inputs, representing different components of an association field, enable neurons to take on different functional roles. In this Review, we discuss the various top-down influences exerted on the visual cortical pathways and highlight the dynamic nature of the receptive field, which allows neurons to carry information that is relevant to the current perceptual demands.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                +442076086938 , M.Cordeiro@ucl.ac.uk
                Journal
                Acta Neuropathol
                Acta Neuropathol
                Acta Neuropathologica
                Springer Berlin Heidelberg (Berlin/Heidelberg )
                0001-6322
                1432-0533
                20 August 2016
                20 August 2016
                2016
                : 132
                : 6
                : 807-826
                Affiliations
                [1 ]UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, 11-43 Bath Street, London, UK
                [2 ]Western Eye Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, 153-173 Marylebone Road, London, UK
                Article
                1609
                10.1007/s00401-016-1609-2
                5106492
                27544758
                00eb27b7-f354-47f7-b2a7-23740ffb8dd6
                © The Author(s) 2016

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

                History
                : 20 May 2016
                : 2 August 2016
                : 10 August 2016
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001285, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London;
                Award ID: UCLB PoC Funding
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000265, Medical Research Council;
                Award ID: Confidence in concept
                Award Recipient :
                Categories
                Review
                Custom metadata
                © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016

                Neurology
                glaucoma,retina,neurodegeneration,cell death,imaging,retinal ganglion cell
                Neurology
                glaucoma, retina, neurodegeneration, cell death, imaging, retinal ganglion cell

                Comments

                Comment on this article