Enhancing Experience-Dependent Plasticity Accelerates Vision Loss in a Murine Model of Retinitis Pigmentosa

The RhoP23H/+ mouse model of RP displays progressive loss of visual acuity first under mesopic conditions and then under photopic conditions. The severity of acuity impairment correlates only broadly with deficits in retinal function measured with the ffERG but is consistent with the percentage of neurons in primary visual cortex responsive to higher spatial frequency visual stimuli measured with calcium imaging. Contrary to our hypothesis, enhancing neural plasticity is deleterious for visual function in RhoP23H/+ mice.