The Eye And The Chip, 2017

Camera: Leica SL
Exposure: 1/400
Aperture: f/1.2
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 1,600

I’m at the Eye and the Chip conference in Detroit, Michigan right now where I presented our work in retinal remodeling and plasticity.  Curing blindness is an interesting and challenging problem and the world leaders in bionic prosthetics are here at this meeting.  Our message was well received, even though it was described by my friend Daniel Palanker as “apocalyptic”.  Regardless, it is important that we understand how complex the visual system is, beginning with the retina, and what happens when any neural system is deafferented.  Granted the engineering behind interfacing electronics with biological tissues requires a huge amount of talent and hard work.  But we are not there yet, and the biological realities, if not solved in parallel will ensure that any electronic and biological solution to curing blindness will fail.  E.J. Chichilnisky heard our message and I’ll look forward too continuing the dialogue with him, making sure we bring him out to visit us at the Moran Eye Center in the not too distant future.

I believe there are a number of ways of going about computer/brain interfaces and find CTRL-labs approaches, to be interesting, even if they don’t know they should be in vision yet.  More on that later…

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