Project Prakash: Merging Science and Service

'Project Prakash' is an initiative launched over a decade ago with the goal of providing sight surgeries to blind children from medically underserved communities in the developing world. In pursuing this humanitarian mission, the project is helping address questions regarding brain plasticity and learning. Through a combination of behavioral and brain-imaging studies, the effort has provided a picture of the landscape of visual learning late in childhood and has illuminated some of the processes that might underlie aspects of such learning.