The blind and visually impaired often rely on others to provide cues and information on navigating through their environments. The problem with this method is that it doesn't give them the tools to venture out on their own, says Dr. Orly Lahav of Tel Aviv University's School of Education and Porter School for Environmental Studies.

University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have discovered that a form of vitamin B1 could become a new and effective treatment for one of the world's leading causes of blindness.

The most common cause of blindness is age-related macular degeneration. British scientists say they have developed a stem cell procedure that will reverse the effects of the disease.

Among zebrafish, the eyes have it. Inside them is a mosaic of light-sensitive cells whose structure and functions are nearly identical to those of humans.

A group of scientists in California is trying to develop a cheaper, less invasive way to spot the early stages of retinal damage from diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of blindness in American adults, before it leads to blindness.

Retinal detachment, a condition that afflicts about 10,000 Americans each year, puts an individual at risk for vision loss or blindness. In a new study in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, a leading ophthalmologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center writes, however, that a high probability of reattachment and visual improvement is possible by using one of three currently available surgical techniques.

For the first time, scientists have been able to map the disruption in neural circuitry of people suffering from congenital prosopagnosia, sometimes known as face blindness, and have been able to offer a biological explanation for this intriguing disorder.

Glaucoma is often associated with elevated pressure inside the eye (intraocular pressure, or IOP) which can damage the optic nerve, leading to vision loss and even blindness. Medication and/or surgery allow patients to control their IOP, thus preventing the development of vision loss.

A research team at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal (IRCM), funded by the Foundation Fighting Blindness – Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), discovered a novel mechanism that regulates how neural stem cells of the retina generate the appropriate cell type at the right time during normal development.

The research, published online today in the Lancet, adds to the growing understanding of the genetics of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which the researchers believe should ultimately lead to novel treatments for the disease.

A team of scientists at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center has created the first genetic research model for a microscopic part of the eye that when missing causes blindness. The research appears in a recent issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Scientists of the University of Granada (Spain) and the San Cecilio Teaching Hospital (Granada) have determined for the first time the causes for the blindness produced by corneal oedema and have identified the genes which cause it.