The Vision Center

Director:  Mark S. Borchert, MD

Kristina Tarczy-Hornoch, MD, DPhil, is interested in how the human brain learns to see—and what can go wrong during development.  One of her investigations concentrates on strabismus or eye misalignment, which often results from farsightedness and frequently leads to serious vision deficit. When adults develop it, their brains permanently produce double vision. “But the very young brain ingeniously adapts, learning to suppress images that enter through one eye or the other,” explains Dr. Tarczy-Hornoch, director of the Vision Development Institute, one of six institutes in The Vision Center at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

In collaboration with Vincent Chen, PhD*, from the Department of Radiology, she is using the latest in neuro-imaging technology—functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)—to pinpoint where visual activities occur in the brains of children, adolescents and adults who have signs of visual suppression.

The investigators first expose the study subjects to visual stimuli that initiate suppression, then eliminate one of those stimuli. The fMRI images reveal if and where the visual process changes.  Investigations like this may lead to therapies for youngsters whose eyes and brain aren’t in sync.

Research Focus

Every 60 seconds, somewhere across the globe, a child goes blind.  Yet, according to the World Health Organization, half of all childhood blindness could be avoided by early treatment.  In the United States alone, vision impairment affects one in four school-age children and one in 20 preschoolers – making vision disorders the fourth most common disability in the country and the most prevalent handicapping condition in childhood, according to the National Eye Institute.

The Vision Center at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is an international center for children with complex eye diseases.  As one of the world’s largest, most respected facilities devoted to pediatric eye care, the Center handles about 12,000 patient visits each year through its six cutting-edge institutes: t he Retina Institute, the Cornea Institute, the Eye Birth Defects Institute, the Vision Development Institute, the Eye Technology Institute, and the Orbit and Eye Movement Institute.  Find out more about The Vision Center.