Retinotopic mapping of cortical plasticity in age-related macular degeneration

<p>Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of central vision loss,driven by progressive damage to the central retina, and results in profound changes in visualperception and behavior. While this retinal damage is well characterized, its consequences oncortical organization remain incompletely understood. This knowledge gap is a majorchallenge, as it limits our ability to predict functional vision loss, track disease progression, orevaluate the success of cortical-level rehabilitative therapies.To bridge this gap, retinotopicmapping provides a powerful framework to directly link retinal lesions to their corticalrepresentation, serving as a primary tool to investigate how these central visual field deficitsimpact the brain's organizational structure. However, its application to AMD is limited byseveral methodological challenges, including fixation instability, restricted visual fieldstimulation, biases in population receptive field estimates, and difficulties in accuratelylocalizing lesion projection zones. Furthermore, current approaches often rely on simplifiedrepresentations of retinal damage and insufficient integration of multimodal data. This reviewsynthesizes current knowledge on cortical changes in AMD and highlights key methodologicallimitations. Addressing these challenges will require improving spatial precision through theintegration of precise retinal measurements, multimodal neuroimaging incorporating oculartracking and advanced computational modeling, in order to better characterize corticalplasticity and develop reliable biomarkers for clinical applications.</p>