Vision Restoration: Optogenetic Therapy & Retinal Prosthetics

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

https://mediaspace.epfl.ch/media/0_wv5w56ni

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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.