who here is alive okay this is an easy
question everybody should be raising
your hand or just about everybody here
okay thank you hands down
who here is blind that might be one or
two of you and for you I apologize that
they’re going to be parts of this
presentation which will not be
accessible but I’ll be narrating through
them so that you can understand what’s
going on now who here knows someone who
is blind or is losing their sight about
one-third of you should had you have
your hands up because about one-third of
you in fact know someone who is blind or
who is losing their sight whether
they’ve told you that or not ask your
parents ask your grandparents talk to
them blindness is widespread it affects
millions of people worldwide the exact
number of millions depends on exactly
how you define blindness for the
purposes of this talk blindness will
mean that you can’t walk without risking
hitting something or someone you can’t
see the food on a plate in front of you
you can’t tell the color of your
clothing or if your shoe has come untied
you if your child or your grandchild
hands you a piece of paper you can’t
tell what the drawing is that they have
made for you
blindness is a devastating condition
that can leave individuals isolated in
withdrawn it has staggering effects
economically in the United States where
we currently have almost full employment
in the general population in the blind
population unemployment runs at about
75% blindness has significant burdens on
the family both in terms of medical
costs as well as everyday care costs the
total cost of blindness to society in
the United States including things like
lost wages is three billion dollar
a year interestingly most of the causes
of blindness are diseases of the eyes
I’m an engineer who’s become a
neuroscientist because of a passion for
vision and I find that very interesting
it’s the sensors that have gone bad
maybe we can fix that the most common
causes of blindness in fact are glaucoma
macular degeneration retinitis
pigmentosa and these three are the
biggest there are many other diseases
including some forms of cancer but these
are the biggest a fourth cause of
blindness although not nearly as common
is trauma specifically blast trauma that
we find in modern warfare we find it in
both the civilian and of the soldier in
areas where there has been war and
landmine fields have been left behind
trauma Rises in frequency and becomes a
leading cause of blindness among
children and the developing world
this story is slightly different and we
have infection and cataract as the most
frequent causes of blindness but those
have solutions we know how to treat
those so we won’t be talking about
treating those individuals
similarly for congenital blindness the
brain is left without the normal
experience of visual sight and so it
doesn’t develop the way it normally
would and so no one in the field is
talking about treating those individuals
not yet so what’s the solution
we know the Oh in the eyes are no longer
sensitive to light as neuroscientists
we’ve discovered that the rest of the
brain is okay and as engineers we know
how to build cameras to capture moving
images and so we can just plug that
information directly into the brain and
vision Steve Austin
Geordi LaForge Neil we’re familiar with
the idea from popular entertainment
because of the technological simplicity
it appears to have the basic idea looks
like this we put a small camera like the
one in your mobile phone into a set of
goggles and send the video stream from
that wirelessly to electrodes that we’ve
implanted in the brain and that provides
restoration of function or artificial
sight as we call them we know how to
build tiny cameras we know how to build
small computers we know how to build
wireless links and we even know how to
build brain electrodes on both a
scientist and an engineer so it should
just work it sounds very simple but
that’s the idea the hard part is in
translating the camera images into the
language of the brain the neural code
and delivering that translation in a
safe way to the right parts of the brain
so that it can be used to reconstruct
images the importance is in the details
and in the details we find challenges in
technology in biomedical engineering and
in science most of you are familiar with
technology but perhaps not so familiar
with neuroscience so here’s a very quick
introduction this drawing is the
underside view of a human brain where
I’ve labeled the different stages of
what’s called the early visual pathway
it’s called the early visual pathway
because it’s the first few stages in a
very long chain of visual processing
light enters the eyes and falls on the
retina where it turns into neural
activity most of the diseases that I
mentioned that cause blindness interfere
with that process and leave the eyes no
longer sensitive to light when the eyes
are working normally however the signals
fall through the optic nerve to the
lateral geniculate nucleus or LGN as
I’ve shown here then through the optic
radiation to the primary visual cortex
at the back of the head that’s where
conscious vision begins
from there it moves on to other parts of
the brain where things happen like
recognizing people places or things
about 40% of the brain is devoted to
vision to restore sight to the blind
where the eyes are no longer functioning
we can think about putting signals from
electronic camera into any of these
stages of the early visual system each
stages each stage uses a slightly
different encoding a slightly different
neural language but we understand most
of those thanks to decades of work we
are in fact standing on the shoulders of
giants
there is evidence going back a hundred
years that we can generate visual
experience by stimulating the brain
different parts of the brain perhaps the
first important attempt at a visual
prosthesis was by Brindley and Lewin at
the University of Cambridge in the late
1960s they put 80 electrodes on the
primary visual cortex surface in a
brilliant bit of bioengineering that was
well ahead of its time they were able to
use these electrodes to generate little
points of light little stars or small
fuzzy circles and we call those
phosphenes phosphenes our visual
experiences that are created without
visual input you see them for example
when you go to sleep at night or before
you go to sleep at night when you close
your eyes those purple and greenish
waves you see them if you hit your head
too hard we call that seeing stars each
of those stars is a phosphine will you
see them when a cosmic ray hits your
retina like for astronauts who
frequently report phosphenes so we think
we can create small phosphines the
pixels of artificial sight by applying
electrical stimulation to any part of
the early visual system worldwide there
are about two dozen groups working on
creating a visual prosthesis and each of
them take a slightly different approach
many of them put electrodes in the eye
some like my group put them in the
and some put them in the primary visual
cortex but they all more or less follow
the same idea they use a man-made an
imaging system to apply patterns of
electrical stimulation to restore sight
they also more or less all face the same
big problem the visual system is amazing
and amazingly experience detailed
experience that it gives you no one is
talking about restoring normal vision no
one all of these groups are creating
devices that provide only very crude
artificial sight better than blindness
but still very very simple some gloops
groups like mine are aiming for a
slightly higher quality visual
prosthesis experience artificial vision
and so we’re taking slightly longer in
development other groups are seeking to
deliver a device as quickly as possible
and so have taken a lower-resolution
path the hard part is not the
technological design of the external
apparatus the camera the eyeglasses the
stimulator but in fact the electrodes
themselves and making sure everything is
biocompatible since putting an electrode
in a human is a hard thing to do most of
these groups rely on computerized
simulations of artificial vision in
order to answer questions about how well
their device and their design will work
they use virtual reality technology and
normal sighted individuals in order to
do this and these simulations are kind
of fun so I’m going to show you two of
them as an example on the left side is a
movie of a young woman from an ordinary
camera on the right will be a simulation
of artificial vision with 500 phosphines
notice a couple of things first
those phosphenes aren’t one right next
to the other like the pixels in your
computer monitor they’re spread apart
that’s because when we put fine wires
into the brain to
electrodes for visual prosthesis we have
to space them every so often in order to
not damage the brain we have to be
clever about biocompatibility in order
to maximize the number of electrodes
that go in because each electrode
produces one phosphine next notice that
if I’d shown you just the right hand
image you probably wouldn’t recognize it
as the face of a woman watch now as the
animation begins you can probably very
quickly see that it is in fact the image
of a woman’s face you see her eyes her
smile you might recognize her you can
tell that it’s a sunny day and she
raises her hands against Lee against the
light the brain does a marvelous
wonderful job of assembling that
information let me play that again the
left image has about a million pixels
the right image only 500 phosphines now
500 phosphines won’t give you normal
vision not by a long shot but it’s not
bad it certainly would be useful or at
least it appears to be so here’s another
example from an experiment that we have
run in the laboratory to test how well
artificial vision can be used to read
there will be a simple sentence that
will that will appear on the screen over
three lines and you’ll hear the subject
read the text out loud notice that the
pattern of phosphines will move as she
looks at different parts of the sentence
can different kind of flowers grow by
the side of the road she normally reads
now I bet no one could actually read
that text but she could remember with
the first animation that I showed you
the jump between the static phosphenes
and when they began to be animated
there’s a similar jump that happens
between watching someone else run an
artificial vision simulation and running
it yourself because the phosphenes move
with your eyes let me play that again
can different kind of flowers grow by
the side of the road she reads that
woman was a typical average subject and
she could read easily and smoothly with
1,700 phosphines
that means that anyone here with normal
vision would probably also be able to
read the same way if we put you in front
of the simulation there are two groups
one in Germany one in the United States
who have created devices that have
received approval for implantation in
blind patients although these devices
are very promising they only provide
very crude vision not nearly as good as
the two simulations I showed you just
now no one has built real devices like
that yet but all of the groups are
working hard in my laboratory we are
currently testing a system that uses 128
electrodes using two of the bundles I’ve
shown here and we have a newer version
of the same thing that doubles that
count to 250 or about half of the number
of phosphenes that you saw in the first
video at the same time we are designing
the next generation system which will
have 1,000 phosphines
and we’ll start testing that in about a
year we aren’t the only ones making good
progress and I expect to hear new
exciting results from field from groups
around the world in the next while the
message I want to leave you with
therefore is as crazy as it might sound
we’re able to put signals directly into
the brain and go from 0 to infinity
restoring sight to the blind thank you
you
question everybody should be raising
your hand or just about everybody here
okay thank you hands down
who here is blind that might be one or
two of you and for you I apologize that
they’re going to be parts of this
presentation which will not be
accessible but I’ll be narrating through
them so that you can understand what’s
going on now who here knows someone who
is blind or is losing their sight about
one-third of you should had you have
your hands up because about one-third of
you in fact know someone who is blind or
who is losing their sight whether
they’ve told you that or not ask your
parents ask your grandparents talk to
them blindness is widespread it affects
millions of people worldwide the exact
number of millions depends on exactly
how you define blindness for the
purposes of this talk blindness will
mean that you can’t walk without risking
hitting something or someone you can’t
see the food on a plate in front of you
you can’t tell the color of your
clothing or if your shoe has come untied
you if your child or your grandchild
hands you a piece of paper you can’t
tell what the drawing is that they have
made for you
blindness is a devastating condition
that can leave individuals isolated in
withdrawn it has staggering effects
economically in the United States where
we currently have almost full employment
in the general population in the blind
population unemployment runs at about
75% blindness has significant burdens on
the family both in terms of medical
costs as well as everyday care costs the
total cost of blindness to society in
the United States including things like
lost wages is three billion dollar
a year interestingly most of the causes
of blindness are diseases of the eyes
I’m an engineer who’s become a
neuroscientist because of a passion for
vision and I find that very interesting
it’s the sensors that have gone bad
maybe we can fix that the most common
causes of blindness in fact are glaucoma
macular degeneration retinitis
pigmentosa and these three are the
biggest there are many other diseases
including some forms of cancer but these
are the biggest a fourth cause of
blindness although not nearly as common
is trauma specifically blast trauma that
we find in modern warfare we find it in
both the civilian and of the soldier in
areas where there has been war and
landmine fields have been left behind
trauma Rises in frequency and becomes a
leading cause of blindness among
children and the developing world
this story is slightly different and we
have infection and cataract as the most
frequent causes of blindness but those
have solutions we know how to treat
those so we won’t be talking about
treating those individuals
similarly for congenital blindness the
brain is left without the normal
experience of visual sight and so it
doesn’t develop the way it normally
would and so no one in the field is
talking about treating those individuals
not yet so what’s the solution
we know the Oh in the eyes are no longer
sensitive to light as neuroscientists
we’ve discovered that the rest of the
brain is okay and as engineers we know
how to build cameras to capture moving
images and so we can just plug that
information directly into the brain and
vision Steve Austin
Geordi LaForge Neil we’re familiar with
the idea from popular entertainment
because of the technological simplicity
it appears to have the basic idea looks
like this we put a small camera like the
one in your mobile phone into a set of
goggles and send the video stream from
that wirelessly to electrodes that we’ve
implanted in the brain and that provides
restoration of function or artificial
sight as we call them we know how to
build tiny cameras we know how to build
small computers we know how to build
wireless links and we even know how to
build brain electrodes on both a
scientist and an engineer so it should
just work it sounds very simple but
that’s the idea the hard part is in
translating the camera images into the
language of the brain the neural code
and delivering that translation in a
safe way to the right parts of the brain
so that it can be used to reconstruct
images the importance is in the details
and in the details we find challenges in
technology in biomedical engineering and
in science most of you are familiar with
technology but perhaps not so familiar
with neuroscience so here’s a very quick
introduction this drawing is the
underside view of a human brain where
I’ve labeled the different stages of
what’s called the early visual pathway
it’s called the early visual pathway
because it’s the first few stages in a
very long chain of visual processing
light enters the eyes and falls on the
retina where it turns into neural
activity most of the diseases that I
mentioned that cause blindness interfere
with that process and leave the eyes no
longer sensitive to light when the eyes
are working normally however the signals
fall through the optic nerve to the
lateral geniculate nucleus or LGN as
I’ve shown here then through the optic
radiation to the primary visual cortex
at the back of the head that’s where
conscious vision begins
from there it moves on to other parts of
the brain where things happen like
recognizing people places or things
about 40% of the brain is devoted to
vision to restore sight to the blind
where the eyes are no longer functioning
we can think about putting signals from
electronic camera into any of these
stages of the early visual system each
stages each stage uses a slightly
different encoding a slightly different
neural language but we understand most
of those thanks to decades of work we
are in fact standing on the shoulders of
giants
there is evidence going back a hundred
years that we can generate visual
experience by stimulating the brain
different parts of the brain perhaps the
first important attempt at a visual
prosthesis was by Brindley and Lewin at
the University of Cambridge in the late
1960s they put 80 electrodes on the
primary visual cortex surface in a
brilliant bit of bioengineering that was
well ahead of its time they were able to
use these electrodes to generate little
points of light little stars or small
fuzzy circles and we call those
phosphenes phosphenes our visual
experiences that are created without
visual input you see them for example
when you go to sleep at night or before
you go to sleep at night when you close
your eyes those purple and greenish
waves you see them if you hit your head
too hard we call that seeing stars each
of those stars is a phosphine will you
see them when a cosmic ray hits your
retina like for astronauts who
frequently report phosphenes so we think
we can create small phosphines the
pixels of artificial sight by applying
electrical stimulation to any part of
the early visual system worldwide there
are about two dozen groups working on
creating a visual prosthesis and each of
them take a slightly different approach
many of them put electrodes in the eye
some like my group put them in the
and some put them in the primary visual
cortex but they all more or less follow
the same idea they use a man-made an
imaging system to apply patterns of
electrical stimulation to restore sight
they also more or less all face the same
big problem the visual system is amazing
and amazingly experience detailed
experience that it gives you no one is
talking about restoring normal vision no
one all of these groups are creating
devices that provide only very crude
artificial sight better than blindness
but still very very simple some gloops
groups like mine are aiming for a
slightly higher quality visual
prosthesis experience artificial vision
and so we’re taking slightly longer in
development other groups are seeking to
deliver a device as quickly as possible
and so have taken a lower-resolution
path the hard part is not the
technological design of the external
apparatus the camera the eyeglasses the
stimulator but in fact the electrodes
themselves and making sure everything is
biocompatible since putting an electrode
in a human is a hard thing to do most of
these groups rely on computerized
simulations of artificial vision in
order to answer questions about how well
their device and their design will work
they use virtual reality technology and
normal sighted individuals in order to
do this and these simulations are kind
of fun so I’m going to show you two of
them as an example on the left side is a
movie of a young woman from an ordinary
camera on the right will be a simulation
of artificial vision with 500 phosphines
notice a couple of things first
those phosphenes aren’t one right next
to the other like the pixels in your
computer monitor they’re spread apart
that’s because when we put fine wires
into the brain to
electrodes for visual prosthesis we have
to space them every so often in order to
not damage the brain we have to be
clever about biocompatibility in order
to maximize the number of electrodes
that go in because each electrode
produces one phosphine next notice that
if I’d shown you just the right hand
image you probably wouldn’t recognize it
as the face of a woman watch now as the
animation begins you can probably very
quickly see that it is in fact the image
of a woman’s face you see her eyes her
smile you might recognize her you can
tell that it’s a sunny day and she
raises her hands against Lee against the
light the brain does a marvelous
wonderful job of assembling that
information let me play that again the
left image has about a million pixels
the right image only 500 phosphines now
500 phosphines won’t give you normal
vision not by a long shot but it’s not
bad it certainly would be useful or at
least it appears to be so here’s another
example from an experiment that we have
run in the laboratory to test how well
artificial vision can be used to read
there will be a simple sentence that
will that will appear on the screen over
three lines and you’ll hear the subject
read the text out loud notice that the
pattern of phosphines will move as she
looks at different parts of the sentence
can different kind of flowers grow by
the side of the road she normally reads
now I bet no one could actually read
that text but she could remember with
the first animation that I showed you
the jump between the static phosphenes
and when they began to be animated
there’s a similar jump that happens
between watching someone else run an
artificial vision simulation and running
it yourself because the phosphenes move
with your eyes let me play that again
can different kind of flowers grow by
the side of the road she reads that
woman was a typical average subject and
she could read easily and smoothly with
1,700 phosphines
that means that anyone here with normal
vision would probably also be able to
read the same way if we put you in front
of the simulation there are two groups
one in Germany one in the United States
who have created devices that have
received approval for implantation in
blind patients although these devices
are very promising they only provide
very crude vision not nearly as good as
the two simulations I showed you just
now no one has built real devices like
that yet but all of the groups are
working hard in my laboratory we are
currently testing a system that uses 128
electrodes using two of the bundles I’ve
shown here and we have a newer version
of the same thing that doubles that
count to 250 or about half of the number
of phosphenes that you saw in the first
video at the same time we are designing
the next generation system which will
have 1,000 phosphines
and we’ll start testing that in about a
year we aren’t the only ones making good
progress and I expect to hear new
exciting results from field from groups
around the world in the next while the
message I want to leave you with
therefore is as crazy as it might sound
we’re able to put signals directly into
the brain and go from 0 to infinity
restoring sight to the blind thank you
you
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