BS 166: Stephen Macknik talks about Vision Research
Brain Science with Ginger Campbell, MD: Neuroscience for Everyone
Ginger Campbell, MD
4.8 • 896 Ratings
🗓️ 24 January 2020
⏱️ 69 minutes
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Summary
Brain Science 166 features the return of neuroscientist Stephen Macknik. We talk about his recent work that is focused on developing a new visual prosthesis based on recent discoveries and techniques like optogenetics.
This episode is more technical than usual but Dr. Macknik makes the material accessible to all listeners.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What we're trying to do is we're trying to apply what we know about vision to creating a device that can take information from a camera and stick it into the visual system so that a blind person can see with the camera in a very similar way |
| 0:16.7 | or the same way that they see with their real eyes when they're not blind. Welcome to brain science, a podcast where we explore how recent discoveries in neuroscience |
| 0:32.0 | are unraveling the mystery of how our brain makes us human. |
| 0:35.6 | I'm your host Dr. Ginger Campbell and this is episode 166. You can get complete show notes and episode transcripts on my website at brain science |
| 0:47.6 | podcast.com. You can send me feedback at brain science Podcast at gmail.com, voice feedback via |
| 0:56.2 | speakpipe.com, forward slash Doc Artemis and you can post feedback on the brain science podcast fan page on Facebook. |
| 1:06.0 | Today's guest, Neuroscientist Stephen Macknick has spent his career studying vision and today he will be telling us about a new |
| 1:15.3 | approach to creating a visual prosthesis. The key difference in the approach he |
| 1:20.6 | will describe is that it does not involve using electrodes but rather |
| 1:24.9 | takes advantage of new discoveries as well as techniques such as optogenetics. |
| 1:30.7 | Today's episode is rather technical. |
| 1:35.0 | So I want to give you a little background information before we jump into the interview. |
| 1:40.0 | Early on, Dr. McNick talks about the phobia, which is the tiny part of our retina where acute |
| 1:46.8 | vision occurs. |
| 1:49.0 | All the signals from the retina, including the phobia, travel via the optic nerve to the part of the brain called |
| 1:56.2 | the thalmus. |
| 1:58.3 | Almost all sensory information goes to the thalmus before it goes to the cortex. The particular area in the thalmus that processes |
| 2:06.6 | visual information is called the lateral geniculate nucleus or LGM for short. So whenever you hear Dr. |
| 2:14.8 | McNick refer to the LGM, just remember that he's talking about the thalmus, which is a deep |
| 2:21.0 | brain structure. |
| 2:30.0 | The other key idea is that information from the eyes is mapped in the thalmus retinopically, which means that there is a spot in the LGM that matches each spot on the retina. |
| 2:38.0 | This same retina topic organization appears in the primary visual cortex. This is the key to trying to build a visual |
... |
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