Retinal prosthetics, like bionic eyes, currently don’t produce sharp, accurate pictures, but researchers at Duke University and York University may have found a piece of the puzzle that could improve messages between the prosthetic and the brain, resulting in better images.
Assistant Professor Joel Zylberberg of the Faculty of Science, a co-author on a study led by Duke University and a core member of York’s Vision: Science to Applications, looked at how the retina adapts to varying intensities of light, from daylight to evening light, and whether the brain needs to account for those changes to correctly interpret the retinal output – what we see.
What they found is that the brain needs to account for changes in the correlations between retinal ganglion cells (the propensity of pairs of cells to be co-active) at all light levels. If it doesn’t, then its information processing will be severely disrupted and so will our sight.
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Image via York University.