Anne Fulton

Anne B. Fulton, MD, divides her time equally between research and clinical practice. As Principal Investigator, she has had continuous NIH funding for more than 30 years. She and her laboratory group study the development of retinal and visual function in infants and children using molecular and structural approaches. She recognized the rod photoreceptors as a site of critical immaturity for infants’ vision and determined the growth curve for the rod visual pigment, rhodopsin, among other milestones, and she went on to show that rhodopsin content scales the developmental increment in dark-adapted retinal and visual sensitivity. She brought first-rate visual electrophysiology and visual psychophysics to our department, perfected the noninvasive assessments of infant and child patients, and related the normal developmental changes in retinal and visual function to the underlying biochemistry of the retina and retinal structure, including the seminal demonstration that the rhodopsin content of the retina scales retinal sensitivity in the developing human retina. More recently, she brought adaptive optics imaging to the department to provide non-invasive retinal assessments at a cellular level. Her currently funded research studies apply these procedures and concepts to the study of retinal disorders, including retinopathy of prematurity.