Hundreds of millions of people worldwide suffer from a vision condition called amblyopia, or lazy eye, with imbalanced vision in their two eyes. Unless this disabling condition is caught and treated at a young age, it’s rare for children to regain full vision, because the brain learns to turn off the input from the “lazy” eye. Amblyopia is one striking example of how the brain is modified by experience, says Professor Mark Bear, a neuroscientist at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. His research focuses on this phenomenon of…
