[Cyborg] Cyborg Digest, Vol 34, Issue 7

Rachel Kalmar grapealope at gmail.com
Sun Feb 12 22:58:38 UTC 2012


Tapping into the optic nerve without going through the ganglion cells (the
natural input to the optic nerve) is actually pretty hard.  The groups
working on retinal prostheses via electrode arrays, they electrically
stimulate the gangion cells, which then send their signals down the optic
nerve.

Rachel

On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 3:22 PM, Ben Green <benigreen at gmail.com> wrote:

> In V.S. Ramachandran's "Phantoms in the Brain" he talks about how there's
> a part of the visual cortex where an array of neurons has a 1-to-1 match
> with photoreceptors in the retina.  I don't remember the details, but he
> talks about how patients who have hallucinations in their blind spots have
> (or may have) activity in this array that originates from the brain instead
> of the retina.  I imagine that targeted stimulation of that array is
> somewhat harder than taping something onto the optic nerve.  I wonder
> though if you could attach a camera to a working optic nerve without
> disrupting the person's normal vision.
>
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 12:00 PM, <cyborg-request at lists.noisebridge.net>wrote:
>
>> Send Cyborg mailing list submissions to
>>        cyborg at lists.noisebridge.net
>>
>> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>>        https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/cyborg
>> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>>        cyborg-request at lists.noisebridge.net
>>
>> You can reach the person managing the list at
>>        cyborg-owner at lists.noisebridge.net
>>
>> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>> than "Re: Contents of Cyborg digest..."
>>
>>
>> Today's Topics:
>>
>>   1. Camera to brain blindness treatment (Alan Majer)
>>   2. Re: Camera to brain blindness treatment (Eric Boyd)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:19:59 +0000
>> From: Alan Majer <alanmajer at hotmail.com>
>> Subject: [Cyborg] Camera to brain blindness treatment
>> To: <cyborg at lists.noisebridge.net>
>> Message-ID: <BAY155-W16EB234ACE571ED4BB8DFBBC810 at phx.gbl>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>>
>> Interesting TED video on taping the optic nerve to send camera info
>> directly to the brain:
>> http://www.ideaconnection.com/innovation-videos/345-camera-to-brain-blindness-treatment.html?ref=nl011812
>> -------------- next part --------------
>> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
>> URL:
>> http://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/cyborg/attachments/20120118/f941f7be/attachment-0001.htm
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:27:32 -0500
>> From: Eric Boyd <mrericboyd at yahoo.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Cyborg] Camera to brain blindness treatment
>> To: cyborg at lists.noisebridge.net
>> Message-ID: <4F16E4E4.4060704 at yahoo.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>> Wow, moving right along!  The bits are coming for your brain!
>>
>> I wonder how they actually know what the brain sees?  I mean, she
>> presents these mock up images of what the brain sees under each
>> treatment option, but it's not so obvious to me how they actually know
>> that.  Problem of consciousness and all that.
>>
>> I also know that while the retina does do some encoding of the signal,
>> it doesn't reach the level she talks about at the beginning (this is an
>> image of a baby), it's more like edge detection, motion detection,
>> contrast & color processing, and other low-level tasks.  Which is why
>> it's easily to duplicate with a chip: it doesn't depend on any knowledge
>> stored in the brain, it's very algorithmic, and everyones retina
>> implements the same thing.  The visual part of the brain (near the back,
>> at the other end of the optic nerve) actually does most of the heavy
>> lifting in terms of pattern recognition - and it's a much harder thing
>> to model, since it does depend on your knowledge of "trees", "cats",
>> etc... she also fails to mention that people born blind probably won't
>> benefit much from this treatment, since they never developed the visual
>> cortex properly.  Getting signals to it would be only the first stage in
>> a much more elaborate treatment.
>>
>> So yeah, in the end, I'm wondering - what did they actually do with the
>> animals (or did they test with humans?) to verify their work?  Did they
>> do object recognition tests?  Or what?
>>
>> I found some links, but don't have time to read them today:
>>
>> http://physiology.med.cornell.edu/faculty/nirenberg/lab/
>>
>> Maybe someone can read more and chime in with a less fluffy version of
>> her presentation?
>>
>> Eric
>>
>> On 1/18/12 9:19 AM, Alan Majer wrote:
>> > Interesting TED video on taping the optic nerve to send camera info
>> > directly to the brain:
>> >
>> http://www.ideaconnection.com/innovation-videos/345-camera-to-brain-blindness-treatment.html?ref=nl011812
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Cyborg mailing list
>> > Cyborg at lists.noisebridge.net
>> > https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/cyborg
>> -------------- next part --------------
>> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
>> URL:
>> http://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/cyborg/attachments/20120118/471fc559/attachment-0001.htm
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Cyborg mailing list
>> Cyborg at lists.noisebridge.net
>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/cyborg
>>
>>
>> End of Cyborg Digest, Vol 34, Issue 7
>> *************************************
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cyborg mailing list
> Cyborg at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/cyborg
>
>


-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Rachel Kalmar
Mobile: (415) 968-9366
Twitter: @grapealope <http://www.twitter.com/grapealope>
Linkedin.com/in/rachelkalmar <http://linkedin.com/in/rachelkalmar>
Skype: grapealope
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/cyborg/attachments/20120212/76004ca6/attachment.html>


More information about the Cyborg mailing list