Lecture

Vision Restoration: Optogenetic Therapy & Retinal Prosthetics

Graph Chat

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.

Description

This lecture delves into the cutting-edge research of Prof Serge Picaud on vision restoration through optogenetic therapy and retinal prosthetics. Prof Picaud explores the use of retinal implants and optogenetics to reactivate residual neurons in blind individuals, aiming to restore visual perception. The lecture covers the development of innovative implants, such as those combining stimulating electrodes and photodiodes, to trigger retinal ganglion cell responses. The discussion extends to the use of optogenetic proteins to make dormant cones photosensitive, potentially reactivating the retina. Prof Picaud also addresses the challenges of tissue remodeling and the need for high-resolution visual stimulation. The lecture concludes with insights into ongoing clinical trials and the future prospects of combining computer vision with implant technology.

Official source

Related concepts (21)

Retinitis pigmentosa

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a genetic disorder of the eyes that causes loss of vision. Symptoms include trouble seeing at night and decreasing peripheral vision (side and upper or lower visual field). As peripheral vision worsens, people may experience "tunnel vision". Complete blindness is uncommon. Onset of symptoms is generally gradual and often begins in childhood. Retinitis pigmentosa is generally inherited from one or both parents. It is caused by genetic variants in nearly 100 genes.

Visual perception

Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment through photopic vision (daytime vision), color vision, scotopic vision (night vision), and mesopic vision (twilight vision), using light in the visible spectrum reflected by objects in the environment. This is different from visual acuity, which refers to how clearly a person sees (for example "20/20 vision"). A person can have problems with visual perceptual processing even if they have 20/20 vision.

Neuroprosthetics

Neuroprosthetics (also called neural prosthetics) is a discipline related to neuroscience and biomedical engineering concerned with developing neural prostheses. They are sometimes contrasted with a brain–computer interface, which connects the brain to a computer rather than a device meant to replace missing biological functionality. Neural prostheses are a series of devices that can substitute a motor, sensory or cognitive modality that might have been damaged as a result of an injury or a disease.

Neurostimulation

Neurostimulation is the purposeful modulation of the nervous system's activity using invasive (e.g. microelectrodes) or non-invasive means (e.g. transcranial magnetic stimulation or transcranial electric stimulation, tES, such as tDCS or transcranial alternating current stimulation, tACS). Neurostimulation usually refers to the electromagnetic approaches to neuromodulation.

Visual system

The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sight (the ability to detect and process visible light) as well as enabling the formation of several non-image photo response functions. It detects and interprets information from the optical spectrum perceptible to that species to "build a representation" of the surrounding environment.

Related lectures (42)

Cochlear Implants: Hearing Restoration

Explores the physiology, technology, and impact of cochlear implants for hearing restoration, including clinical applications and future directions.

Artificial Sight: Restoring Vision with Retinal Implants

Explores bioelectronics, types of blindness, and retinal implants for restoring vision, covering challenges and advancements in artificial sight technologies.

Vision Research to Clinical Therapy

Explores vision research, optic nerve regeneration, and bio-realistic models in the mouse visual cortex, focusing on optic nerve stimulation and visual learning.

Visual Information Processing: Eye and Implants

Covers the processing of visual information in the eye, the anatomy of the retina, the biochemistry of photoreceptors, and the use of implants to treat visual impairments.

Visual Variables in Cartography