NEWRON: Vol IV, Issue V
Natan Davidovics
NeuroEngineering Weekly Review Of News
When most people think of October, they think of the fall or Baseball playoffs, but what many are not aware of (including myself until I googled it 5 minutes ago) is that October is World Blind Awareness month. Accordingly (or coincidentally), this week's NEWRON covers recent neuronengineering advances in vision.
Interesting NeuroEngineering links:
Hopkins Neuroengineering web site: http://neuroengineering.bme.jhu.edu
New job blog: http://neuroengjobs.blogspot.com/
Blog for administrative questions: http://neuroengineering.blogspot.com
NEWRON on the web!: http://neuroengineering.bme.jhu.edu/Home/newron
Natan Davidovics CEO
NEWRON Publishing Corporation
Artificial Retina Can Restore Sight to the Blind
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/10/15/artificial-retina.htmlAn artificial retina could restore sight to the blind, according to new research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The device can be plugged directly into the optic nerve and is based on widely used cochlear implants. The artificial retina is designed to help people with advanced macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa, progressive diseases that permanently blind patients, usually older patients.
Brain Scans Reveal What You’ve Seen
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/brain-scans-reveal-what-youve-seen/Scientists are one step closer to knowing what you’ve seen by reading your mind. Having modeled how images are represented in the brain, the researchers translated recorded patterns of neural activity into pictures of what test subjects had seen. Though practical applications are decades away, the research could someday lead to dream-readers and thought-controlled computers. The research, led by Gallant and Berkeley postdoctoral researcher Thomas Naselaris, builds on earlier work in which they used neural patterns to identify pictures from within a limited set of options.
Caltech Scientists Create Robot Surrogate for Blind Persons in Testing Visual Prostheses
http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13294Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a remote-controlled robot that is able to simulate the “visual” experience of a blind person who has been implanted with a visual prosthesis, such as an artificial retina. An artificial retina consists of a silicon chip studded with a varying number of electrodes that directly stimulate retinal nerve cells. It is hoped that this approach may one day give blind persons the freedom of independent mobility.