Bliss Chapman

There's actually a million people, 1 million people in the US that are legally blind. You know, that means like certain, like score below in kind of the visual test. I think it's something like if you can see something at 20 feet distance that normal people can see at 200 feet distance, like if you're worse than that, you're legally blind.

Yeah, like to navigate your environment. And yeah, there are different forms of blindness. There are forms of blindness where there's some degeneration of your retina, these photoreceptor cells, and the rest of your visual processing that I described is intact. And for those types of individuals, you may not need to maybe stick electrodes into the visual cortex.

Yeah, like to navigate your environment. And yeah, there are different forms of blindness. There are forms of blindness where there's some degeneration of your retina, these photoreceptor cells, and the rest of your visual processing that I described is intact. And for those types of individuals, you may not need to maybe stick electrodes into the visual cortex.

Yeah, like to navigate your environment. And yeah, there are different forms of blindness. There are forms of blindness where there's some degeneration of your retina, these photoreceptor cells, and the rest of your visual processing that I described is intact. And for those types of individuals, you may not need to maybe stick electrodes into the visual cortex.

You can actually build retinal prosthetic devices that actually just replaces the function of that retinal cells that are degenerated. And there are many companies that are working on that. But that's a very small slice, albeit significant, still smaller slice of folks that are legally blind.

You can actually build retinal prosthetic devices that actually just replaces the function of that retinal cells that are degenerated. And there are many companies that are working on that. But that's a very small slice, albeit significant, still smaller slice of folks that are legally blind.

You can actually build retinal prosthetic devices that actually just replaces the function of that retinal cells that are degenerated. And there are many companies that are working on that. But that's a very small slice, albeit significant, still smaller slice of folks that are legally blind.

If there's any damage along that circuitry, whether it's in the optic nerve or just the LGN circuitry or any break in that circuit, that's not going to work for you. And the source of where you need to actually cause that visual percept to happen because your biological mechanism is not doing that is by placing electrodes in the visual cortex in the back of your head.

If there's any damage along that circuitry, whether it's in the optic nerve or just the LGN circuitry or any break in that circuit, that's not going to work for you. And the source of where you need to actually cause that visual percept to happen because your biological mechanism is not doing that is by placing electrodes in the visual cortex in the back of your head.

If there's any damage along that circuitry, whether it's in the optic nerve or just the LGN circuitry or any break in that circuit, that's not going to work for you. And the source of where you need to actually cause that visual percept to happen because your biological mechanism is not doing that is by placing electrodes in the visual cortex in the back of your head.

And the way in which this would work is that you would have an external camera, whether it's something as unsophisticated as a GoPro or some sort of wearable Ray-Ban type glasses that Meta's working on, that captures a scene. That scene is then converted to a set of electrical impulses or stimulation pulses that you would activate in your visual cortex through these thin film arrays. And by

And the way in which this would work is that you would have an external camera, whether it's something as unsophisticated as a GoPro or some sort of wearable Ray-Ban type glasses that Meta's working on, that captures a scene. That scene is then converted to a set of electrical impulses or stimulation pulses that you would activate in your visual cortex through these thin film arrays. And by

And the way in which this would work is that you would have an external camera, whether it's something as unsophisticated as a GoPro or some sort of wearable Ray-Ban type glasses that Meta's working on, that captures a scene. That scene is then converted to a set of electrical impulses or stimulation pulses that you would activate in your visual cortex through these thin film arrays. And by

Playing some concerted orchestra of these stimulation patterns, you can create what's called phosphenes, which are these white, yellowish dots that you can also create by just pressing your eyes. You can actually create those percepts by stimulating the visual cortex.

Playing some concerted orchestra of these stimulation patterns, you can create what's called phosphenes, which are these white, yellowish dots that you can also create by just pressing your eyes. You can actually create those percepts by stimulating the visual cortex.

Playing some concerted orchestra of these stimulation patterns, you can create what's called phosphenes, which are these white, yellowish dots that you can also create by just pressing your eyes. You can actually create those percepts by stimulating the visual cortex.

And the name of the game is really have many of those and have those percepts be, the phosphenes be as small as possible so that you can start to tell apart, like they're the individual pixels of the screen, right? So if you have many, many of those, potentially you'll be able to...

And the name of the game is really have many of those and have those percepts be, the phosphenes be as small as possible so that you can start to tell apart, like they're the individual pixels of the screen, right? So if you have many, many of those, potentially you'll be able to...

And the name of the game is really have many of those and have those percepts be, the phosphenes be as small as possible so that you can start to tell apart, like they're the individual pixels of the screen, right? So if you have many, many of those, potentially you'll be able to...

In the long term, be able to actually get naturalistic vision, but in the short term to maybe midterm, being able to at least be able to have object detection algorithms run on your glasses, the prepop processing units, and then being able to at least see the edges of things so you don't bump into stuff.