So, a solution to the problem, then, would be to build a device that could mimic the actions of that front end circuitry and send signals to the retina's output cells, and they can go back to doing their normal job of sending signals to the brain.

Yeah, it's called Retinitis Pigmentosa.

So let me start in on that problem.

Colors are flavonoids and polyphenols.

It's a very difficult procedure, but it is possible to photograph this image.

But fingerprints and retinas are unique.

They receive comprehensive eye exams.

51 Days

This is another example of patient specific stem cells that were engineered from someone with retinitis pigmentosa.

They'll be so small, they'll be embedded in our clothing, in our environment.

I found out the the following.

And, how come you can't detect colors when it's dark?

little bit and show you how a normal retina works first so you can see the problem that we were trying to solve.

It'll just bake your retinas.

So what happens when a person gets a retinal degenerative disease like macular degeneration?

I had retinal detachment five years ago.

Here's one that's in prototyping by Medtronic that's smaller than a penny.

So it consists of two parts, what we call an encoder and a transducer.

I just wanted to say something about the standard method.

So we are really duplicating the kind of signals that you have on the optic nerve.

The processing, of course, begins with the eyes.

It works.

also a work of fiction.

Next he has to pass a retinal scan.

So this is how close your mental experience and the activity of the neurons in the retina, which is a part of the brain located in the eyeball, or, for that matter, a sheet of visual cortex.

Carmen Puliafito, who developed a laser scanner of the retina,

So it's just math.

Light perception happens in a paper thin layer of cells, called the retina, that covers the back of your eyeball.

We're going to take these blue light photosensors and install them on a layer of cells in the middle of the retina in the back of the eye and convert them into a camera just like installing solar cells all over those neurons to make them light sensitive.

I'm not sure cool is really the right word, but you know what I mean.

But the only way your brain can do that, is that it has to, instead of generating a perception of the way the world was when light hit your retina, it has to do something fancier.

Completely different meanings, giving rise to the exact same retinal information.

Light travels through the pupil, through the eyes interior.

Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, spinal cord injury, muscular dystrophy, retinal eye diseases are any of these conditions relevant, personally, to you?

we still need something that could translate what she saw something that could translate from her eyes to a monitor.

Stem cell derived retinal transplants, now in a research phase, may one day restore vision, or part vision, to millions of patients with retinal diseases worldwide.

Here is actually what our artificial eye looks like.

And I'm going to show you a system that we designed to model the retina, which is a piece of brain that lines the inside of your eyeball.

You see the going down towards the fovea where the optic nerve begins.

It's not like we're making a little mini device for each of the different cell types.

And so, in a way, the equations are serving as sort of a codebook.

But when it's moving back and forth, the retina picks up these changes.

Mr. White, how's that implant treating you?

Then what happens is the retinal circuitry, the middle part, goes to work on it, and what it does is it performs operations on it, it extracts information from it, and it converts that information into a code.

So that's called the visceral pericardium.