27. "Brain Plasticity: Can Eyes See Outside of the Head?"

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/01/tadpole_eye_transplants_reveal_neuroplasticity_in_tufts_lab.html

March 1, Jason Bittel wrote an article to Slate about a remarkable new finding in science. This experiment requires a bucket of tadpoles and an alternating current. Scientists will use the embryos from an African clawed frog to transplant eye primordia. As the eyes grows, they send out nerve fiber from the transplant. Scientists will be able to watch the nerve growth of the eye primordias that built connections to the stomach and not the brain. However, before they could test these eyes they had to remove the original ones to see if they could really see though these "fake"eyes. During testing, the tadpoles with no eyes could still react to the color changes showing that they have other ways of seeing.  While the tadpoles with the transported eyes did not react to the color changes. Similar past studies with rats have been successful so why were tadpoles the first species to send visual information to the brain without direct connection. This obviously rose many questions. Who knows, maybe in the future scientists will be able to create cybernetic devices that discover things on its own, and not just what it is programmed to do.

The author's purpose is to inform readers about some new scientific discoveries happening in the world.    Throughout the article, Bittel explains in detail the experiment that was done with the tadpoles and later compares it to another experiment dealing with rats to show the difference. This gives the readers a good understanding of the scientists brain process and how there new experiment will out out based on the tadpole experiment. His main strategy is to show what new project scientists are working on.