The brain science collaboration that offers hope to blind people - Nature

A key aim of Pieter Roelfsema’s research is to develop a device to restore rudimentary eyesight to people whose optic nerve has died.

Neuroscientist Pieter Roelfsema describes how his research might ultimately help people who have lost their sight.

An applied goal of Pieter Roelfsema’s lab at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam is to create a visual brain prosthesis aimed at people who have lost their sight.

To help achieve this goal, the lab partners with both neurosurgeons and artificial intelligence researchers.

“We are knowledgeable about how to put electrodes in the brain,” says Roelfsema, “but we collaborate with experts who know about how to make these electrodes so that they don't damage the brain tissue too much, also with people in artificial intelligence who can take camera images and translate them into brain stimulation patterns.

“We also collaborate with neurosurgeons who can inform us how to really make this device and make it something that is going to be feasible for a neurosurgeon to really implant in the brain. That is definitely a very important goal for me, to bring this to a patient.”

Read and listen more on: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00819-2